Young Guns Critic Reviews

Young Guns is best watched in the playful, none-too-serious spirit in which it was made. Though the film concentrates reverentially on its young stars, it also includes good performances from a few grown-ups, notably Terry O'Quinn as a lawyer and Jack Palance as the story's wild-eyed villain.Read the full review

Considering how tidy and self-aware most such Hollywood projects are, any movie that can give Phillips' Mexican-Indian a monologue in which he painfully recounts the massacre only he survived and then blithely rejoices in idiot gunfire is a movie you have to respect. [12 Aug 1988, p.35]Read the full review

To say Young Guns is one of the best big Westerns of the '80s doesn't mean much: Westerns have been almost moribund since 1976. But it does hint at this movie's surprising vitality, bloody ebullience and violent impetuosity-qualities it shares with crazy little Billy. [12 Aug 1988, p.11]Read the full review

The surprisingly entertaining Young Guns isn't really so young. The cast is uniformly convincing, especially Estevez as a deranged Billy the Kid and Kiefer Sutherland, playing against type as the gang's calm center. [12 Aug 1988, p.7D]Read the full review

Young Guns is really a modern action movie in the revenge mode, disguised as a western. But with all its faults, it more or less works. Palance is a great heavy, Estevez makes an off-the-wall hero, and there's usually enough happening on screen to keep you interested. [12 Aug 1988, p.E3]Read the full review

Fusco's script undercuts whatever freshness it may have brought to its view of Billy the Kid with a steady stream of howlers, most of which involve Kiefer Sutherland, as the sensitive member of the gang. [12 Aug 1988, p.24]Read the full review