Category: Terry O’Quinn

YOUNG GUNS

By Marc S. Sanders

In the late 1980s a novel idea hit the screens.  An MTV interpretation of the Old West with a rock anthem soundtrack of electric guitars and drums. A far separation from Ennio Morricone’s unbeatable spaghetti western approach.  

The film was Young Guns, featuring handsome stars like Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, and Lou Diamond Phillips.  They were each different kind of gunslingers in their own right while delivering stand out personalities.  The film has some problems in editing, and some sequences do not work.  Yet, it remains stylish with impressive set designs, props, costume wear, and an especially appealing array of performances from the whole cast.  

Billy The Kid aka William H Bonney is one of the most notorious outlaws in American history.  Emilio Estevez brilliantly turns the gunslinger into a quick draw joker with an addictive cackle and an adorable smile.  William is taken in by the mentoring John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) who already oversees a collection of orphaned young men.  He’s teaching them to bear responsibility on his farm while they learn proper manners at the dinner table and how to read.

A neighboring industrial enemy, L.G. Murphy (Jack Palance) commissions his men to gun down Tunstall.  Billy and the rest of the gang are then deputized by the local Sheriff to issue warrants for the arrest of the killers.  However, Billy repeatedly exercises his own form of justice by killing one guy after another with his pair of six shooters.  Soon after, the boys are on the run by horseback while creating a whole bunch of mayhem.

I never considered Young Guns to be a perfect film, but I like it a whole heck of a lot.

There are moments that serve no purpose, like when the men get high on peyote, introduced by the Navajo, Chavez Y Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips).  It’s not amusing.  It’s not quotable and the scene runs too long as we watch the cast walk and talk while in daze.  Frankly, most movie scenes of just watching people get high are boring.  Often, they go nowhere and I’m not sure how to respond. It’s like I’m the designated driver fiddling with my car keys at a drunken binge fest. This is no different.

As well, there seem to be gaps within the body of the story. I know it is inspired by the Lincoln County War, but it’s never entirely clear why Tunstall and Murphy are at odds with each other.  We just have to accept that the two elderly men of equal proportions are against one another.  Still, Palance versus Stamp is a very inviting conflict to look at. (Supposedly, the real John Tunstall was only in his mid-20s.)

Young Guns has a very cool polish.  These cowboys are downright attractive, sexy like Hollywood movies tend to offer, and I love how they handle each other, their horses and their pistols.  Every time a six shooter whips out of a holster and clicks, the movie becomes more alive.  The guys look well-worn within this environment, close to the Mexican border of the 1870s.  The image is just as effective as Clint Eastwood appears in his various assortment of westerns.  

Billy The Kid, over this film and its sequel, is Emilio Estevez’ best role of his career.  The actor has such a cocky, nervy way about him and his over-the-top laugh is impossible to forget.  A favorite scene in all of movies emerges when Billy toys with a bounty hunter in a saloon.  Estevez delivers much fun before gunning the guy down. I never tire of watching that moment.

Kiefer Sutherland is second in line with a graceful sensitivity as the educated and poetically romantic Doc Scurlock.  You worry about him and his courting affair with a young Chinese concubine that is owned by Murphy.  Lou Diamond Phillips specializes in knife throwing as Chavez, the token Navajo.  His presence belongs here as an unpredictable sidekick.  

The best surprise is delivered by Casey Siemaszko as the virginal, boyish illiterate Charlie.  Some gunslingers were afraid to ever become outlaws.  Charlie is ugly and dirty, bumbling and sweet, reminiscent of Fredo in The Godfather films.  Siemaszko never became as established as the others in the cast, but he’s a good performer who delivers panicked fear and brings the glamour of Young Guns down to a semblance of reality.  

Young Guns is a style over substance product.  It has potential for a stronger storyline, but the dialogue works and the cast is stellar, which also includes Dermot Mulroney, Terry O’Quinn and Charlie Sheen.  The sequel is actually better as it commits closer to the intrigue of Billy The Kid.  

Not perfect, but this is a fun escapist western experience.

PRIMAL FEAR

By Marc S. Sanders

If you explore the career of Edward Norton, you may find a common theme of duality in many of his roles.  Certainly, The Incredible Hulk (man vs literal green monster).  There’s also the heist film The Score where he is an aspiring thief with a talent to take on a mentally handicapped persona.  American History X offered a wide transition from downright evil to wholesome redemption from the worst of sin.  Even the remake of The Italian Job shows one kind of jerky guy early on, and later there’s another kind of cad on display.  Yet, Norton’s role as a church choir boy named Aaron Stampler in his first film, Primal Fear, is maybe his most apparent, and it remains an astonishing performance.

I had read William Diehl’s novel long before the movie was even made.  My impression of the film is that it is well cast.  Early on in the story, Aaron is apprehended following the grisly murder of Chicago’s Archbishop.  His clothes are covered in the priest’s blood and he’s captured on the news trying to outrun the police.  This looks like an open and shut case, which is why hot shot attorney Martin Vail (Richard Gere) wants to take on defending Aaron, pro bono. 

Simply the name of Gere’s role, Martin Vail, could not be more appropriate.  He thrives on vanity and pride, ensuring that when he gives an interview it is none other than a cover story.  Gere is perfectly handsome and his energy is so right for the part.  He wears his suits with natural and self-assured swagger.  When Martin attends a benefit dinner in the first few minutes of the picture, everyone in the room knows who he is, whether they only at least admire the guy, or downright despise the ego he proudly carries.  Only Martin Vail will insist that young Aaron with a boy scout, puppy dog expression could be innocent.  Everyone else has deemed his client as “The Butcher Boy.”

The accused is a simple kid who was brought in off the streets by the Archbishop.  He’s a nobody.  It’s the victim who is prominent, and one of the first strategies that Vail engages in is putting the deceased Archbishop on trial because it could lend to just what he needs for exoneration – reasonable doubt.  That could mean other prominent figures in the city will get caught in the web. 

Like many mysteries and courtroom dramas before and after Primal Fear, red herrings abound.  The side stories dealing with botched real estate investments within minority neighborhoods feel like they sprung from a completely different cloth, like an episode of L.A. Law.  What keeps them above water though are the performances of the supporting cast with John Mahoney and Stuart Bauer, respectively portraying the state district attorney and a Hispanic well-established mobster that Vail represents.  Somehow, Diehl’s murder trial story circles back to these guys and what the Archbishop had to do with them.

A twisted sex scandal within the church also comes into play.  After all, where there’s murder there is motive.  The math is not that simple though.

To lend a little more conflict to the film is the prosecuting attorney Janet Venable.  She is played by Laura Linney, maybe doing a little over acting, who once had a tryst with Martin.  Honestly, it comes off as an unnecessary subplot, perhaps only there to give quick witted resentful dialogue for Janet to serve at Martin, while Gere puts on the teasing smirk to send back over the net.  The opposing counsel try to psych one another out, but we all know that Martin is the smarter attorney of the two. 

Primal Fear hinges on Edward Norton first and Richard Gere second.  Norton’s performance is written, and thereby performed, to come in under the radar for the first half of the film.  Aaron is a quiet, frightened, uncertain kid from the backwoods of Kentucky.  Gere and the supporting cast populate much of the first half of the movie.  Later, Aaron offers up a surprise delivery that turns the film on its heel, and the story takes on a whole new trajectory. 

Gere is superb with the conceit of the character.  Director Gregory Hoblit places Martin Vail front and center during transition shots where he gives statements to the press while entering the courthouse.  It’s a subtly effective way to uphold how proud and cocky the attorney is.  When the surprise from Norton comes around though, even a hot shot, intuitive lawyer like Martin can’t immediately figure out what to do next.  The surprise works even though it comes out of nowhere.

Primal Fear offers a lot of standard stuff from other typical courtroom thrillers.  Some players are introduced that could lend to why the crime occurred.  Some are there to distract you.  Some are there to circle back around in the third act.  There’s a ping pong volley of objections and witness testimony.  There’s the blood splattered crime scene investigation.  We’ve seen it all before.  Nevertheless, I don’t hold any of that against the film.  I still get a thrill out of standard car chases and shootouts the same way I stay alert through another courtroom mystery.  It’s fast paced and until the puzzle is completely assembled, I’m engaged especially if the cast is working on all cylinders. 

The end leaves you thinking though because just when you believe all the pieces have been put back into place there’s one hanging thread that is left unraveled and you may be asking yourself how that got past me.  That’s when you know you are watching an entertaining movie.  If you have to think about it long after it is over, then the movie got one over on you.  Primal Fear accomplishes that feat.