Young Guns (1988)

A 1988 western about six young men hired by an English rancher in Lincoln County, New Mexico, who become deputized regulators after the rancher is murdered, and then become outlaws after they cannot stop killing. Christopher Cain directs. The cast is a lineup of late-80s actors who were all on the ascent: Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney, Casey Siemaszko. The film is a western that is also a brat-pack film, a true-crime story, and a tragedy about what happens when the law gives young men guns and then takes the law away.

What the film does

John Tunstall, an English cattleman in Lincoln County, New Mexico, hires a wayward young gunman named William Bonney, Billy the Kid (Emilio Estevez), to join the Regulators who live and work on his ranch: Doc Scurlock (Kiefer Sutherland), Jose Chavez y Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips), Dick Brewer (Charlie Sheen), “Dirty” Steve Stephens (Dermot Mulroney), and Charlie Bowdre (Casey Siemaszko). Tunstall tries to educate and civilize the young men. He clashes with rival rancher Lawrence Murphy, an Irishman in league with the corrupt Santa Fe Ring.

On New Year’s Day, Murphy’s men kill Tunstall. Tunstall’s lawyer friend Alexander McSween arranges for the Regulators to be deputized and given warrants for the killers’ arrest. Billy challenges Dick’s authority as foreman. Instead of bringing men in alive, Billy kills several unarmed men, including McCloskey, a Murphy plant he suspected of feeding information. Newspapers paint the Regulators as a deadly gang headed by “Billy the Kid.”

Buckshot Roberts tracks them down. A shootout follows. Roberts barricades himself in an outhouse and kills Dick. The Regulators shoot up the outhouse and flee. Chavez reveals Murphy’s corruption led to the murders of his mother and her Navajo tribe. Billy takes charge as the new leader.

They kill corrupt Sheriff William J. Brady and his men. McSween tells them their badges have been revoked. They are now wanted men. They flee to Mexico briefly then return. Soon-to-be-sheriff Pat Garrett warns Billy that Murphy’s men will take McSween’s life.

At McSween’s house in Lincoln, the gang is surrounded by Murphy’s men and bounty hunter John Kinney. The Regulators survive an entire day’s shootout. Corrupt U.S. Army troops arrive. Murphy orders the house set on fire. McSween’s wife is allowed to leave. Chavez slips away. Billy hides in a trunk thrown from a window and surprises the attackers. Chavez returns with horses. Charlie and Kinney shoot each other dead. Doc and Yen Sun (Murphy’s Chinese ward, whom Doc loves) ride away. Steve is shot after getting a wounded Chavez onto a horse. McSween is gunned down by a Gatling gun. Billy escapes after shooting Murphy between the eyes.

Doc’s narrated epilogue tells the rest: Chavez worked a farm in California, Doc moved east and married Yen Sun, McSween’s widow became one of the most prominent cattlewomen in the territory, Murphy’s ring of corruption collapsed. Billy continued to ride until Garrett killed him. He was buried next to Charlie at Fort Sumner, where someone carved the epitaph: “PALS.”

Why it’s in the canon

Criteria blend is 1+3, loved it and want to remember it. The film is a western that is also a brat-pack film, which sounds like a contradiction and is not. The young-men ensemble is the film’s actual subject. The Regulators are young men who are given guns and badges and told they are the law, and then the law is revoked and they are still young men with guns. The film understands that the tragedy is not that Billy is a killer. The tragedy is that Billy is right about Murphy’s corruption and the law will do nothing about it, so the only law left is Billy’s gun, and the only endpoint of that law is a Gatling gun and a burning house.

Emilio Estevez as Billy the Kid is one of the few performances that understands Billy as a person who genuinely believes he is the hero of the story he is telling himself, and the film never winks at the audience about it. The rest of the cast is doing the same work: each Regulator has a reason for being there, and the reasons are different, and the film makes space for all of them.

“I’ll make you famous” is the line everyone remembers. The line sounds like a catchphrase but it is not. It is the diagnosis of exactly what Billy wants and what he is willing to do to get it, and the film knows that “famous” in the Lincoln County War means “dead in a burning house at twenty-one.”

A note on the title

The film is “Young Guns” (1988). The Letterboxd and Wikipedia pages use this title. The slug is young-guns.

On hand

DVD only (no digital/download).