The Left Handed Gun

James Congdon

Charlie Boudre

There is something of the original Chisum story to this western as William Bonney - aka “Billy the Kid” (Paul Newman) is hired by the decent Tunstall (Colin Keith-Johnson) to herd his cattle to Lincoln where it is to be used to feed the troops. The sheriff “Brady” (Robert Foulk) and three of his deputies have other plans and so they kill the unarmed Briton and steal his cows. When he finds out, Bonney is livid and swears vengeance on the murderers. To that end, he must cross his friend Pat Garrett (John Dehner) and with his pals Tom (James Best) and Charlie (James Congdon) sets about killing the sheriff and thereby causing no end of trouble for just about everyone. After a shoot-out and ensuing conflagration, everyone assumes he has been roasted but we know that he has fled to Mexico where he is awaiting the right time to strike against the surviving deputies. Bonney is no brute though, he carefully sets up his scenarios so that his targets have an opportunity to draw before he outclasses them - but do two wrongs really make a right? To be honest, I found this all a bit hit and miss. Newman has moments when his confidence simply overwhelms the vulnerability that this attempts to characterise Bonney with, and there’s a great deal of dialogue that does render this a bit sluggish at times, especially at the start. There is a solid supporting cast from the likes of Hurd Hatfield - whose storyline comes with it’s own particular sub-plot; Lita Milan plays adequately as his latter-day love interest “Celisa” and Denver Pyle, but this cross-over between the psychological and the traditional just didn’t catch fire for me. It is worth a watch, but it isn’t quite the sum of it’s parts.