In Their Own Words, Billy the Kid & The Lincoln County War

The concept is great for a very low budget movie that nevertheless tells a good story. Having actors play historical characters and tell a historical story through their lines is intriguing, though perhaps better suited for the stage than for the screen.

Unfortunately the execution is unforgivably sloppy. For starters, the closed captions are riddled with errors of word choice and spelling. The cuts are awkward, and the occasional intrusion of "producers" asking questions is badly handled and badly framed.

Too often dialogue lines are repeated verbatim without apparent motivation.

The historical accuracy is okay, given the necessary allowances for telling a good story without undue complexity.

The casting was mostly okay. Billy was quite good. The mother was awful: way too young and stilted monologue.

This comes across as a college or high school acting class exercise. It would be quite good if that's all it purported to be.