I've stated a bunch of times, especially when it comes to foreign films, how my taste in films differs from that of the professional movie critics. Another good example of that came when I watched one of the movies that TCM ran in honor of the late Kris Kristofferson some months back: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Pat Garrett was shot to death in 1908, although the movie gets this slightly wrong by opening up the action with an expository scene near Las Cruces, NM, in 1909. Pat (James Coburn) is riding with some of his partners, at least until the group is ambushed and Garrett is killed, which did happen in real life. Now since this is just the opening scene and we haven't met Billy the Kid yet, it's obvious that there's going to be a flashback.
Indeed, we flash back to 1981. Billy Bonney (Kris Kristofferson) has been depredating parts of the New Mexico territory, and unsurprisingly the locals are tired of it. Garrett is about to be named sheriff of the county where Billy is based, charged with the responsibility of getting Bonney to move on or else face arrest. Billy scoffs at that idea, so once Garrett becomes sheriff, Billy is indeed arrested and faces the death penalty. Except that he's helped to escape.
Garrett goes to Santa Fe, the territorial capital, and meets with the territorial governor, Lew Wallace (Jason Robards, and yes that's the same Lew Wallace who wrote Ben-Hur) who, with some help from the rich cattleman types, put a bounty on Billy's head. Meanwhile back at Billy's hideout, he finds that there are people other than the authorities who would like him dead, and they show up at the old hideout where he and his gang used to stay where Billy went back to. They're going to try to kill him, but Billy is able to defeat them in a shootout, together with some help from a stranger named Alias (Bob Dylan, yes the singer).
The authorities learn that Billy has moved to the area where John Chisum (Barry Sullivan, and Chisum was the subject of a different Billy the Kid movie) has his cattle, so Garrett and some of the cattlemen's ring that also want Billy dead go there. The chase continues, and continues, until as we know from real life Billy is killed by Garrett, so I'm not giving away much here. It would be like saying the Japanese attack in the climax of From Here to Eternity.
As you might guess from my opening paragraph, I didn't much care for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It's slow, filled with those pointless zooms and pans that were a thing in movies of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and director Sam Peckinpah uses his signature style for filming violence -- of which there's a lot in this movie. Not that I have a thing against violence, but the Peckinpah style is tediously stylized, like watching everybody overact in an old silent movie or the deaths of the people from killer bees in The Swarm.
On the other hand, critics just seem to love love love this movie for reasons I totally can't fathom. I just don't see anything in it that makes it rise above other respected westerns. But since they do love it, it's the sort of movie you're going to want to watch and judge for yourself.
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