Review of The Left Handed Gun

First, Sam Peckinpah's movie "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" is the singular best version of this story. He was quoted that he enjoyed this movie, The Left-Handed Gun, watching it five times or so. One can see elements in The Left-Handed Gun of Peckinpah's genius. The shooting of the deputy and sheriff while awaiting Bonny's hanging is representative. For the times, this film pulls it out well. Peckinpah, though, puts a viewer in the buckshot full of thin dimes that splays the sheriff on the dirt. The cabin in Peckinpah's version has his dialogue and conversation that rivets one. That Left-Handed doesn't equate that misses the way Paul Newman carried this story thru all of its parts. Both create empathy for Billy the Kid though he is a killer. The endings resemble one another particularly how Pat Garrett grieved. Peckinpah's movie, the extended version, is in the Top Five of real western movies (in my view). The Left-Handed Gun gave a format that Sam Peckinpah dressed up to a movie that one can watch over and over.