Watch Billy the Kid For Free

Wonderful character development!

good back-story, and good acting

An Exercise In Nonsense

There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.

In the golden age of Hollywood, films that glorified old West outlaws were common and Billy the Kid and Jesse James were often the subjects in these movies. In all these films, the actual lives of the bandits were rather unimportant and they were mostly fiction. Here with "Billy the Kid" (1941), once again they stray very far from the real story. The most obvious is choosing Robert Taylor for the role--and hearing everyone call him 'Kid' seemed ludicrous. Compared to the only known photo of Billy, Taylor looks practically nothing like him and the well-spoken and urbane actor seemed like an odd choice--especially as he was just too old for the part. Of course, having folks like Roy Rogers and Audie Murphy looked little like him yet they also played him! Heck, considering that it didn't matter, I could have just as soon seen Keye Luke or Willie Best play the guy! The film supposedly follows Billy's career--his path to becoming a wanted man. There's some nonsense about a friend of his being murdered and he must then oppose some old friend who stands on the wrong side in the conflict. It's all reasonably well acted, mildly interesting and looked nice in color. BUT, historically speaking it was just nonsense. And, as a retired history teacher, I just cannot recommend this bit of 'historic license' (i.e, a total lie). Watchable but wrong.

The best thing about this movie version of Billy The Kid is the color photography. Taylor looks good (he was in his prime at that time), but he's horribly miscast....too old to play the part. There's no Tunstall, no Pat Garrett....and both actors playing the changed parts are far too old. It reminds me of Howard Hughes' The Outlaw, except that the actor who played Billy in that film was much better cast (closer in age, but not much of an actor). There's lots of music, romance, and talk, talk, talk. In short, it becomes extremely boring after awhile. May be worth watching once, but hardly worth a second look. Despite the views of Arizona and Utah, most scenes are obviously shot on a sound stage.

I wonder if it's possible to count the number of stories filmed about Billy the Kid, a tragic nobody. There's Paul Newman in "The Left Handed Gun," Kris Kristofferson, Buster Crabbe in a serial, and an endless array of others. The story lends itself to dramatization. An obdurate law breaker and killer when barely in his teens, Billy is reformed by a good man who is killed, and later Billy is killed himself by an old friend. Better than some of Shakespeare's stuff.There are a couple of admirable features to be found in this incarnation of the old tale. First, we are treated to extensive second-unit work in Monument Valley, John Ford country, and very nicely photographed (by unheard-ofs Skall and Smith), with breakers of mist rolling through the spectacular rifts.Then, too, the story itself, while it only roughly follows the contours of history, sort of grows on you. When you first see Robert Taylor as Billy, he's dressed all in black and rides a black horse and a black gun belt holding a Colt with a corrugated handle. One winces at the sight and dreads the worst.Strangely enough, though -- I hope you don't mind taking a small scenic detour which will give us a better view of the Totem Pole -- strangely enough, black is not just a symbol of power but seems to imbue those who wear the color with greater determination. At any rate, the more the color black is featured in sports uniforms, the greater the number of wins. Honest. That's from a sidebar in an introductory psychology textbook.But, as I said, the plot is infectious. By the end, I was really curious to see how Billy's conflicting impulses would be worked out. There was no Pat Garret character so the climax was problematic.The movie has its weaknesses. One is Robert Taylor. I suppose he's handsome because everyone thought so at the time but he's a little old for the part and he does not perform celluloid magic. He seems to sit a horse well. He grew up in rural Nebraska and may have had some experience with the animals.And I don't know if anyone could overcome the lack of sparkle in the dialog and the pedestrian nature of the script itself. "I ain't sayin'," says Billy repeatedly. And, "Silver City's a long way off." And, "Law and order is comin' to the West and you better not get run over by it." And, as the end title informs us, "The last man of violence finds his peace." There isn't a tag line in a cartload. The dialog could have been written by a Magic 8 Ball.And every single one of the generic conventions of the Western is present. Men face each other and draw. Grudges become engrams. If you want to out draw a man without killing him, you graze his wrist with your bullet. And there is the Mexican sidekick, raggedy Pedro. He plays the guitar and follows Meester Beelee around and spends time in jail. In some scenes his skin is positively black. In others it's merely swarthy. Halfway through the movie, against a backdrop of Monument Valley, Pedro and Billy sit around a fire and Pedro points to an isolated rock formation known locally as El Capitan and says that's the greatest tombstone in the world. Heaven must be filled with people buried under tombstones like that. And we know Pedro's last scene isn't as far off as Silver City. We also know precisely where Pedro will be buried.What's painful about watching this film is realizing how EASY it would have been to turn it into something more than routine. If only the manufacturers would have seen this as more than just another product. This is about the so-called Lincoln County war in New Mexico. Can I recommend watching a movie about another range war, in Wyoming, between cattle men and squatters? "Shane"? Just to see what might have been if some effort had been put into "Billy the Kid"?

Fine actor Robert Taylor seems to be a bit long in the tooth (although he was only 30 at the time) to portray "The Kid." Still, if you suspend all knowledge of the Billy legend, he does a stalwart job as an older and wiser Billy. Brian Donlevy is great, as usual, though he plays the good guy Sherwood (Pat Garrett in reality and in subsequent Billy the Kid inspired films)instead of his many tough guy badies (Beau Geste - Academy Award nominee, and Destry Rides Again - to mention two). The writers seem to change all the names to protect...well who?Instead of Tunstall, the english gentleman rancher who tries to change Billy's wayward ways, it's Keating. Instead of Murphy, the instigator of the Lincoln County War, its Hickey. And instead of Pat Garrett, it's Sherwood. But, some good shoot 'em ups and some good dialogue make this a pleasant Saturday afternoon at the westerns. Saddle up.Check out Ivanhoe, Waterloo Bridge, and Knights of the Round Table to see Robert Taylor at his best. For other Billy movies, see Young Guns, Young Guns II, Chisum, and the Left Handed Gun.