The sequel to the unnumbered Young Guns of 1988 tells the version of the Billy the Kid legend that would (and did) attract the attention of the NBC-TV series Unsolved Mysteries, the version in which the Kid emerges from the desert in 1950 as an old codger calling himself Brushy Bill Roberts. That thesis, though, isn't the focus of the movie, just the beginning and the end of it. In between is a desultory chase story with fast and frequent access to gunplay, and with gaps bridged by the codger's wheezy narration. It relies very little on its predecessor, which alone is very much to its credit. And, on the same side of the ledger, it spends far less time wooing the youth audience. But the action scenes nonetheless fall in line with that current vogue for presumptuous skips and elisions, lots of nose-flattening closeups and fast-shuffle cuts, much motion and little connection, so that the scene bears about the same relation to an old Anthony Mann or Henry Hathaway action scene as does a Paula Abdul dance number to a Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. And the sheer sustained loudness -- of guns, of horses' hooves, of background music -- is perhaps bluntly youth-oriented after all. Emilio Estevez, William Petersen, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips; directed by Geoff Murphy. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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