The Left Handed Gun (1958)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Expected more

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

There is an oft-told story of how Paul Newman took out a full-page ad to apologise for his performance in his first film, "The Silver Chalice" when it was first shown on television. Wether this is true, or apocryphal. I don't know ? {Has anyone ever seen a copy of it??).Now, anyone who has seen "The Silver Chalice" knows that Newman did not do that bad a job in the film. For a first attempt,it's ok. The movie is pure hokum but, most of these "Sword & Sandle" Epics were. (What it does have is amazing and wonderfully stylised art direction, which keeps you watching!)In my opinion, it is this, his third film, for which he should be humbly apologising. Originally planned by Warners for James Dean, it is risible, to say the least!Newman gives an almost comic (and terrible!) impression of both Brando and Dean combined, which grows more and more hysterical until its "I AIN'T got the bullets" finale. I think the only Brando cliche he doesn't utilise is the "I could'a bin a contender" line?Penn must take most of the blame for encouraging Newman to ham it up like this. It is like an over-long episode of one of Warners' TV Cowboy shows that were so popular at the time ("Cheyenne",etc).Don't get me wrong. I've always been a big fan of Newman's...... he did some terrific stuff in his career. But.... this one would try anyone's patience.

'The Left Handed Gun' is a relatively obscure Western, having received a mere fraction of the attention given to titles such as 'The Searchers' and 'Once Upon a Time in the West'. Usually when I see a Western with a low number of ratings, alarm bells ring; I predict mediocrity and I'm often justified in my anticipations. 'The Left Handed Gun', however, proved me wrong. Paul Newman plays the legendary Billy the Kid, and his antics across the West have a lot in common with the great actor's later role in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'. This is where the similarities end, however, as this title is a much more brooding film, which by the hour-mark has drawn parallels with Marlon Brando's biker film, 'The Wild One': both titles exhibit a society pushed to its limits in its accommodation of dubious characters, and show the inevitable tragedies when the lawful clash with the lawless. Whilst the lighter scenes are sadly unremarkable, the climactic points in 'The Left Handed Gun' are excellent, and the tensions culminate in what I consider to be one of the greatest conclusions ever shown in a Western. One of history's greatest antihero actors channels the excellence that will later define 'Cool Hand Luke', and this is not a Western to miss.

This is an uneven movie. It begins with Paul Newman playing Billy the Kid as a borderline simpleton who somehow acquires a normal intelligence by the end of the movie. The first half of the movie is manic, with Billy and his two sidekicks talking loud, acting silly, and laughing at things that are not funny, probably because they are drunk, but ends as some kind of overwrought, psychological melodrama. I think it's called Method Acting.This movie would have us believe that we are seeing a demythologized version of this character from the Old West, but it depicts all his killings as being justified, and when he is shot by Pat Garrett, he has no gun in his holster, so he really is not beaten to the draw, all in keeping with the traditional mythology.I have an idea. Why not make a movie in which Billy the Kid is an evil scumbag? That would be some serious demythologizing.

I had a problem seeing this film because I could not accept Paul Newman's performance as Billy the Kid. He was such a great actor, but in this film he overacts. I decided to see it again and was glad that I did it because you have to place a film in the time it was made. This is what I read in a print of a poster for the film published in the book "The Western" by Phil Hardy :"This is William Bonney, a juvenile "tough" from the back-alleys of New York...a teenager wanted dead or alive throughout the West. This is the screen's first real story of the strange teen-age desperado known to legend as "Billy the Kid..." By seeing this ad it becomes obvious that there was an idea at least in the publicity of the film to move "The Wild One" and "Rebel Without a Cause" to the West. Probably this kind of performance was demanded of Newman. The film is far from perfect, but has many qualities, the main one that it makes us understand very well Billy's internal conflicts. Billy here is an open book, compared specially to Kris Kristofferson' s unpredictable Billy. Same goes for Pat Garret. Considering what was made before, including the awful "Freudian" version "The Outlaw" and what came after,Peckinpah's excellent film and both "Young Guns" "The Left Handed Gun" stands up quite well.