Young Guns is an Emilio Estevez vanity project, which was once a thing. Estevez lacks the screen charisma and acting ability, but it’s a confusing part. He’s Billy the Kid and he’s playing him like a manipulative but somehow still likable psychopath. For about half the film, John Fusco’s script can keep up with Estevez–director Cain is utterly incapable with his cast and does nothing to assist Estevez or reign him in when need be–but it all falls apart in the end. It doesn’t fall apart from very high, but it does fall apart. The script gets worse, Cain responds to the different pace of the film by abandoning all his nods to pretense, which the first half is littered with. They’re not good, but they’re diverting.

Fusco’s script is interesting in how it characterizes the Young Guns of the title. Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland (he’s the sensitive one), Lou Diamond Phillips (he’s the soulful Native one), Charlie Sheen (he’s the godly one), Dermont Mulroney (he’s playing Pigpen from Peanuts only with some bigotry), Casey Siemaszko (he’s the loudmouthed but soulful little guy). Fusco writers the characters for Mulroney, Siemaszko and Phillips as caricatures; he’s nicer to Phillips than the other two, but there’s still no character development. Sheen, Sutherland and Estevez should get it too, but they just get plot points and costume changes.

Terence Stamp is good. Terry O’Quinn is sort of good; his part is just terribly written. Cain doesn’t seem to understand doing his washed-out Western–Dean Semler’s photography is desaturated, which has good and bad results–but Cain doesn’t realize the parts aren’t fitting. Not just the acting–and Cain’s direction of it–but the script and the stupid music. Young Guns has a sax-heavy smooth jazz thing going on. It’s very eighties. In all the bad ways. What’s sad is it’s tolerable in all those defects until the last act; the result of previous hundred minutes don’t add up to what the film closes with. Very obliviously, because Cain tries to ape Sam Peckinpah to risible result.

Young Guns is a bad movie with some earnest and bad performances. But it should’ve been better; throughout its runtime, it shows it should’ve been better. I mean, Christopher Cain wastes a Patrick Wayne cameo. How can you screw up a Patrick Wayne cameo?

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CREDITS

Directed by Christopher Cain; written by John Fusco; director of photography, Dean Semler; edited by Jack Hofstra; music by Brian Banks and Anthony Marinelli; production designer, Jane Musky; produced by Cain and Joe Roth; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Emilio Estevez (Billy), Kiefer Sutherland (Doc), Lou Diamond Phillips (Chavez), Charlie Sheen (Dick), Dermot Mulroney (Dirty Steve), Casey Siemaszko (Charley), Terence Stamp (John Tunstall), Jack Palance (Lawrence G. Murphy), Terry O’Quinn (Alex McSween), Sharon Thomas Cain (Susan McSween), Alice Carter (Yen Sun) and Patrick Wayne (Pat Garrett).