ThiefHott Too much of everything

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

CinePete Arthur Penn's debut film was scorned in 1958, but has since gained recognition as a forerunner of the Revisionist Westerns that emerged in the 1960s.The original ad calls Billy a 'teenage desperado' and Penn's film gets the manic side to young Billy the Kid, wild at heart in a 1950s delinquent style, unrestrained, juvenile, engaged freely in bad boy antics, almost a clown. Billy is really the "Kid" in Penn's version - cast off from family and home, living with a "gang", as it were, losing his father figure (here, almost as soon as he meets him), then running loose and wild. The spirit of adolescence infuses the film's initial sections, but Billy becomes disillusioned quickly, and almost invites his own downfall without fully comprehending much of anything in the world around him.Surprisingly, as quoted in the movie, the Biblical phrase "through a glass darkly" comes to accurately suit the world-view of Billy - and several later Arthur Penn figures in the 1960s.His story as presented here (from an original television treatment by Gore Vidal) contradicts the dime-novel frontier legend that an eager writer (Hurd Hatfield) fabricates as the film goes along, manufacturing "fake news" for his own profit. Ideas are introduced into the Western that no one has yet dared to think about - the possibility of a gay frontier character in Hurd Hatfield's Moultrie, the links with James Dean's kind of 'angst', the macabre, almost comic nature of the sheer act of sudden dying. As will become significant in Penn's cinema, violent deaths here are prolonged, anguished, senseless; there is no clean, quick or merciful way of dying. Perhaps the French critics who praised the film were more attuned to the visually cinematic touches - anguish accentuated by close shot, rambling episodic structure, heightened treatment of violent acts, clash of horseplay with sudden deadly gunplay, the abrupt changes in mood and tone.Without a fully realized screenplay and with alleged studio interference (particularly noticeable in the ending sections), The Left-Handed Gun leaves us only partially satisfied, but still impressed by Penn's creative disregard for established conventions.Well worth a look for its times-they-are-a-changing attitude towards both the Western genre and America's founding myths.

Richard Dominguez This Is By Far The Best Version Of A Billy The Kid Movie I Have Ever Seen ... Paul Newman Is Amazing As William Bonnie (Billy The Kid) ... He Does Bring A Sense Of Misunderstood Empathy To The Role (A Kind Of James Dean Feel) ... The Acting "All The Way Around" Was Excellent As Is The Scenery ... What I Liked Most Of All Is That I Got A Real Feeling That This Was An Accurate Outline Of The Bonnie Story And What I Believe Is A Much More Realistic Ending To The Legend "That Really Wasn't Much Of A Legend" ... The Director Arthur Penn Does A Marvelous Job Of Adding All The Little Touches That Take A Movie Out Of The Realm Of Fantasy And Makes It Just That Much More Believable ... To Fans Of The Legend, Actor Or Genre All I Can Say Is Check This One Out

Michael_Elliott The Left handed Gun (1958) ** (out of 4) William Bonney (Paul Newman) is the subject of this Western who seeks revenge for the death of a friend and becomes known as Billy the Kid. As he goes for his revenge the young gun slinger meets Pat Garrett (John Dehner) and the two strike up a friendship.THE LEFT HANDED GUN wasn't one of the first attempts by Hollywood to tell the Billy the Kid story. Countless Westerns had been done on the infamous Bonney but this one here really doesn't work all that well. Of course, if one is interested in history then it's probably best that you really stay away from this as it's yet another sugar-coated version of the story that makes Bonney out to be a troubled but good guy.I personally don't care on how historically accurate the story is. What I care about is the entertainment factor and I think that is quite low here. It's really too bad something better wasn't done with the story because you have some good elements scattered throughout but sadly, in the end, it all adds up to nothing. I thought the B&W cinematography was extremely good and I also thought we got a good score to listen to. Dehner really steals the show as Pat Garrett and I really loved the actor's outburst at the wedding.You'd think that Billy the Kid would be a good role for Newman but he seems a tad bit lost in the setting. He gives a good performance but I think he probably would have been better served in another film. The character just never fully gets explored and the actor is left without too much to do. THE LEFT HANDED GUN will be worth watching if you're a die-hard fan of Newman but others should check out a different version of the story.

edwagreen A western detailing revenge and its aftermath best describes this 1958 Paul Newman film.Newman starts off a shy, slow-witted young man who is taken in by a cattle raiser who is so kind to him. When the latter is shot down by a rival group, Newman vows revenge and in his process of eliminating the man's killers, he gains quite a reputation which shall ultimately lead to a tragic ending.The story is one of being drawn into further gun play by a variety of circumstances, amnesty gone terribly awry, church wedding shootings and becomes quite violent as the bodies begin to pile up.Revenge begets revenge here. Keep to the good book and remain a lord fearing bible carrying person is the theme here.