Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Year Released: 1973
Rating: 1.0
Sluggish rethink of the famous altercation between the two Western icons - Garrett the outlaw turned cop, Billy the Kid the 'good guy' turned 'bad guy' - and how the charismatic Kid keeps evading justice, bedding Mexicans and befriending the disenfranchised. Peckinpah made the ultimate Death-of-the-Western in The Wild Bunch so this just seems superfluous - plus, he's clearly in love with the symbolic meaning of these two figures to such a great extent that Billy the Kid almost seems modeled after Jesus Christ. The trouble is, both men are basically one-dimensional, and the movie itself amounts to little more than its shootouts, its blood so red it looks like paint and its dubious inclusion of Bob Dylan as a knife-hurling assassin.
