Morgan Creek. Director Geoff Murphy; Producer Paul Schiff, Irby Smith; Screenplay John Fusco; Camera Dean Semler; Editor Bruce Green; Music Alan Silvestri; Art Director Gene Rudolf
Emilio Estevez
Kiefer Sutherland
Lou Diamond Phillips
Christian Slater
William Petersen
James Coburn
Although it's more ambitious than most sequels, Young Guns II exhausts its most inspired moment during the opening credits a nd fades into a copy of its 1988 predecessor - a slick, glossy MTV-style western.
Even the film's one surprise - a wizened horseman emerging from the desert, circa 1950, to recount the tale of Billy the Kid - feels lifted from Arthur Penn's 1970 classic Little Big Man, all the way down to Emilio Estevez' hoarse, whispering narration.
Oater follows a stripped-to-the-bone storyline that picks up the adventures of Billy Bonney's Lincoln County gang a few years after the events in 1988's Young Guns. Told in flashback, the story essentially involves the gang's hell-bent rush toward the perceived saftey of Mexico with a band of government men - headed by ally-turned-adversary Pat Garrett (William Petersen) - in hot pursuit.
Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips are back, but the rest of the gang is new, and the other characterizations prove disappointingly thin. Christian Slater has a nice recurring bit as a Gun with an inferiority complex over his lack of notoriety; Petersen cuts a striking figure as Garrett without providing much insight into his motives.
1990: Nomination: Best Song ('Blaze of Glory')
(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1990. Running time: 103 MIN.
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