Perfectly adorable

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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.

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"?

Robert Taylor in 1941 was a tall, handsome, mature 40-year old man and typically played a hero or authority figure -- such as the leader of the wagon train in "Westward the Women." Here he's cast as a short, fun-loving immature teenage gunslinger. The casting is as hopeless as having Clint Eastwood playing Mary Poppins.Besides that, none of the story comes even close to the real (and easy to access) story of Billy the Kid -- which is far more interesting than any movie ever made about him.In 1941, Technicolor westerns were few and much appreciated, as color was new and the 3-strip Technicolor of that era was/is stunningly beautiful and far better than color photography in 2009. Seeing a picture like this would have been special. Actually, if you ignore the mis-casting and the true history, this picture is enjoyable.For a better look at Billy, seek out Universal's "The Kid from Texas" starring Audie Murphy. Billy's body-count is still inflated, but the story is 80% accurate and Murphy is perfect as Billy.

Of all the versions of the Billy the Kid saga this is one of the loosest ones with the facts. Even the names are completely changed in this film with only Robert Taylor retaining Billy's most known alias of William Bonney. Even Brian Donlevy does not get to play Pat Garrett, he's Jim Sherwood in this.But this is the standard Billy the Kid story, a young outlaw who goes to work for a straight arrow rancher during a range war. Then later when the rancher, in this case Ian Hunter, is gunned down at that point the tragic end that Billy will come to is irreversibly set for him.This was Robert Taylor's first western and it would be another eight years before he did another. After that westerns became pretty standard film fare for him. Taylor, like his good friend, Ronald Reagan, loved horses and probably if MGM hadn't made him a romantic heart throb, he would have loved to have been a cowboy actor. Like Reagan he certainly looked at home hosting Death Valley Days later on.Jim Sherwood(Pat Garrett)is a different part for Brian Donlevy to play. Donlevy was at the high point of his career as a screen villain and being a good guy for him is almost a case of an alternate universe. But being the professional he was, Donlevy carries off the portrayal in fine style.Ian Hunter is just fine as the English gentleman rancher who tries to set Taylor on the straight and narrow. And you will not find a sneakier more loathsome villain than Gene Lockhart as the local boss of the area who is provoking a range war with Hunter. Billy the Kid is not the best western that Taylor ever did, but it certainly opened a whole new career vista for him.