Young Guns II

Full of sound, gunfire, fury and scorchingly beautiful landscapes, Young Guns 2 generates more sheer visual excitement than any Western since Peckinpah and Leone were in their last '70s prime.

As the movie goes on, a couple of the Regulators are gunned down, and all it really stirred in me was a wish that they not be reunited in that big valley in the sky for Young Guns III.

Although it's more ambitious than most sequels, Young Guns II exhausts its most inspired moment during the opening credits and fades into a copy of its 1988 predecessor -- a slick, glossy MTV-style western.

The point is that the soundtrack includes Jon Bon Jovi, and that the stars play to the audience with a nod and a wink that says, 'Well, no one takes Westerns seriously any more, do they?'

The other members of the Lincoln County Regulators, Billy's gang, share a similar boyishness that's geared far more carefully to the tastes of today's teen-age audiences than to the folklore of the old West.

The action and the acting are so listless that the only honest reaction to what transpires onscreen is a healthy snore.

The cast is strong, delivering performances that always feel honest and in the moment, thereby making the violence that they must enact and endure all the more tense for us, as well as them.

The film is not really bad, but it is not very good either. [Full review in Spanish]

Young Guns II is a bad movie, too, but bad in an uninteresting way.

Murphy directs cleanly, arranging the shoot-outs and Billy's personal declarations of doubt with a solid rhythm, making the film feel urged instead of assigned.