Young Guns II

Those 'regulators' left standing at the end of Young Guns reassemble for another romp around a landscape shot in homage to John Ford. Phillips and Sutherland are back, while Charlie Sheen has been more than adequately replaced by Getty. Billy the Kid (Estevez, frantically scene-stealing) still leads the gang, and as the film opens with him stumbling out of the desert at (seemingly) the age of 120 to tell his story, he'll no doubt ride the teen-Western for some time. The plot is all pot-shots and posses, with a bit of Indian hocus-pocus thrown in for comic relief. In other words, more of the same. The Kid is dismayed to discover that, to save his own hide, his buddy Pat Garrett (Petersen, wasted) is hot on his trail. A tentative subtext plays with the psychology behind being the fastest gun, and with a little imagination you could make something of the group dynamics - but this is not the point. 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?'