The Left Handed Gun

Billy the Kid seeks revenge for the murder of his employer. This oft-told tale gets the psychological treatment in this account based on a play by Gore Vidal. Newman replaced first choice James Dean, and seems to be doing a Dean impression of the misunderstood youth, along the lines of "Rebel Without a Cause." Since Newman was rarely guilty of overacting, the blame here must fall on Penn, directing his first film after years of "playhouse" work on TV that encouraged exaggerated acting. Furthermore, the film is choppy and drab looking. Penn of course got better with experience. The biggest joke is that Billy the Kid was actually right handed.

While wandering in a desert area with the saddle of his deceased horse on his back, the drifter William "Billy the Kid" Bonney (Paul Newman) stumbles with the cattle owner John "The Englishman" Tunstall (Colin Keith-Johnston) that asks him what he wants and William asks for a job. Tunstall hires him to help to bring his cattle to Lincoln to sell the herd to the army and William befriends him. However, the local Sheriff Brady (Robert Foulk) ambushes Tunstal with the rancher Morton (Robert Griffin), his Deputy Moon (Wally Brown) and Hill (Bob Anderson) and kill the cattleman to avoid the business and steal his herd. Billy the Kid promises revenge against the men and together with his friends Charlie Boudre (James Congdon) and Tom Folliard (James Best), he kills Brady and Morton. Billy hides at McSween's house that is burnt down to ashes and Billy is assumed dead by the population. He flees to Madeiro where he meets his friends Pat Garret (John Dehner), Saval (Martin Garralaga) and his daughter Celsa (Lita Milan) that loves Billy. Soon Governor Lew Wallace proclaims amnesty in the New Mexico Territory and Billy is free from any charge. However Moon and Hill are still alive and Billy still wants to revenge his friend.

"The Left Handed Gun" is a western that tells one version of the Billy the Kid story. Directed by Arthur Penn, the film is uneven, alternating good with silly moments. However, it is mandatory for fans of Paul Newman, Arthur Penn and westerns in general. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Um de Nós Morrerá" ("One of Us Will Die")

Billy The Kid has been played on screen by many actors, of whom Paul Newman may have been the most justly famous. So why is his Billy such a drip?

Newman was 33 years old and had managed to make the most of his second chance at screen fame with a solid turn in "Somebody Up There Likes Me," playing a rebellious young boxer. As Billy, though, Newman seems lost as a similar character of sudden impulse. "All I know is how I feel," he says, and that's true whether he's brooding Brando-like over the death of a rancher he just met or dancing up a storm three minutes later. For every scene he plays with his trademark cool, there must be four or five he exaggerates to strange effect.

It's a strange movie with or without him. Celebrated by some as a psychological western, it presents Billy as neither evil nor a sociopath, but rather as tied up by an understandable if extreme need for revenge. There was this guy, you see, who gave Billy a job and then got shot by some corrupt peace officers, and he promised to teach poor Billy to read.

Never mind that Billy doesn't know this guy when the movie starts and he's already dead ten minutes in. Nor that Billy's two partners-in-crime, Tom (James Best) and Charley (James Congdon), have no clear reason for siding with their hot-tempered friend. "The Left-Handed Gun" is a film in a hurry, mainly to give Newman as much opportunity to emote as possible. Boy, does Newman emote!

Compositionally, "The Left-Handed Gun" does some interesting things. We see Billy's first gunfight through a steamed-up window taking place while Billy simultaneously maps it out, a terrific effect. Director Arthur Penn and cinematographer J. Peverell Marley (not a harmonious team, as Penn reveals in a DVD commentary) continually find unique details to capture the eye, like one man's face pressed against a window glass after taking a fatal bullet. In his movie blog "Nothing Is Written," Groggy Dundee points out just how much of Penn's big escape scene made it into the later Sam Peckinpah movie "Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid," to the point of identical blocking and camera angles.

This is a better film that that one, which is overlong and cattywampus. Penn makes a point in his DVD commentary about the film being taken away from him in the editing room, and there's much sloppiness in evidence in the final cut, like Tom taking the same bullet in two consecutive scenes. But Penn must take the blame for a cast that overplays way too much, as if Newman's Method acting style was the swine flu. Best either whacks his hat or giggles constantly, while John Dehner as Pat Garrett has an atrocious scene where he whines at Billy for shooting a guy during his wedding reception.

"This wall, this street, this town, I married all of it," Dehner screams. I shudder to imagine the honeymoon.

Best's future "Dukes Of Hazzard" castmate Denver Pyle sticks out in a better way as the ornery Ollinger, while Hurd Hatfield coos over Billy as an overly florid Southern writer who wants to make his fortune writing up Billy's career. Considering this was based on a play by Gore Vidal, there may be a subtext there, though Hatfield works his few scenes more in the direction of a creepier Vincent Price. I liked him, even if I don't think he got across anything more than a hint of an idea about our exploitative celebrity culture.

That's the problem with "Left-Handed Gun," aiming too high and not getting what it shoots for. That and Newman, who shows some star power here but not much acting skill. Unlike Billy, he had time to get better.

The director of Bonnie & Clyde and Little Big Man is off to a promising start with The Left Handed Gun, his first film. The film stars a young Paul Newman as Billy the Kid. Billy, working as a ranch hand, swears revenge on the four men who ambushed and killed his boss.

That's about it for plot. Newman plays Billy well, portraying a man bent on his mission. One senses that he means well, but his short temper and dark past always get the best of him, even during his friend's, Pat Garrett (John Dehner in a nice performance), wedding.

Unfortunately, Newman suffers from a weak supporting cast and little character development. I found it hard to believe that Billy could develop such a strong bond with his boss in such a short time (although the movie doesn't exactly specify how long). With the possible exception of Garrett, the remaining players are there to fill up the screen.

In short, I wasn't disappointed with this film, but if you want to view a great Western about a man driven by revenge, definitely see John Wayne in The Searchers.

One of the strangest westerns ever made. Arthur Penn's "The Left Handed Gun", adapted from a play by Gore Vidal, came right at the height of the 'teenage rebel' cycle of the fifties with Paul Newman's Billy the Kid having more in common with James Dean's Jim Stark than any Western outlaw I can think of. The film wasn't a success; it's highfalutin dialogue and over-the-top acting proving too much for a general audience who, if they looked just below the surface, would have easily detected a homosexual subplot involving Hurd Hatfield's character who acts as a kind of Greek Chorus. It marked the screen debut of Penn who didn't make another film for four years though it's now built up something of a cult reputation. It isn't really very good, and it is very self-concious, but it is also too bizarre to dismiss out of hand.