SummaryA young boy, Rio (Jake Schur), is forced to go on the run across the American Southwest in a desperate attempt to save his sister (Leila George) from his villainous uncle (Chris Pratt). Along the way, he encounters Sheriff Pat Garrett (Ethan Hawke), on the hunt for the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid (Dane DeHaan). Rio finds himself increa...
SummaryA young boy, Rio (Jake Schur), is forced to go on the run across the American Southwest in a desperate attempt to save his sister (Leila George) from his villainous uncle (Chris Pratt). Along the way, he encounters Sheriff Pat Garrett (Ethan Hawke), on the hunt for the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid (Dane DeHaan). Rio finds himself increa...
A consistently involving and often exciting drama in which the two Wild West icons are presented from the p.o.v. of an impressionable adolescent who weighs the pros and cons of each man as a role model.
Movie was ok, but like the things that happened in it etc werent that exciting or memorable to say this is a great movie. Felt quite average overall. Like it passed time and wasn't bad
A diverting Western that’s almost worth seeing for the unsaddled performances that director Vincent D’Onofrio gets from his cast, The Kid only makes a few small adjustments to the dustiest of American genres, but these errant wrinkles — a far cry from any serious revisionism — provide much of the fun.
It's a correct western, at least not a bad one. But something gone wrong about it. Some sequences are pretty well made while another ones are near to feet a low budgeted direct to video. That's quite strange actually. The two different stories in the film does not feet correctly together, at a point one is near to be usuless. The acting isn't amazing at all, the score is inefficient, the photography is not well made and the overall experience lacks of a real interest. We are at thousands miles away from a 3:10 to Yuma. I suspect that Vincent D'Onofrio is a better actor than director.
Somewhere in here there's a decent western film, but the final product doesn't show it. It ends up being a paint-by-numbers western that completely falls apart about half way through the runtime.
While the performance by Ethan Hawke stands out and the Billy the Kid character is kind of interesting, they are not enough to rescue the rest of the movie.
The movie is about a boy searching for a moral compass in a world of moral ambiguity, but there is little continuity and progression as the movie stumbles from scene to scene up to a finale that makes no sense except in a Hollywood script. It is as if somebody created a list of Western tropes and the plot was later developed around that list. The dialogue is clumsy and sometimes barely believable and it is filled with tired cliches and neo-cowboy philosophy.
Some of the minor characters end up being distractions that detract from the movie. The biggest distraction is Leila George. Nobody's sister is that beautiful, especially if she is only a minor character.
Finally, I like Chris Pratt, but he was miscast. His character is supposed to be an evil drunken psychopath, but instead he seems too much like Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation.
D'Onofrio is a professional, he has an eye on the target and a gun in his hand, unfortunately, the kid has to be cradled.
The Kid
D'Onofrio has an eye for it. He surely does. But then, he is also milking it. The irrelevance is the major theme that drags, the director, Vincent D'Onofrio's first project, down to a slow dull fist fight. Cowboy duel. I meant, cowboy duels. So, more mundane, in short. And by irrelevancy, I mean, from long close-up shots to devouring the scenery and from brutal violence to crave for cinematic pleasures and then shuck it away for the shocks. Which, is the structure here. It builds up the upcoming event to a degree that it cannot sell. Overselling, is the primary textbook rule in a show business, to have. But to rely upon a wafer thin content as such, has got to be a bit paradoxical.
Another bummer, is how hard D'Onofrio tries. Now, it is always appreciative and he does. But he tries so hard to carve out a marvelous nail-biting sequence, that his one-liner comes off forcefully dry and a cry for cheap shots. And with aplenty flaws as such, the steadiness and confident is to be admired, even though it doesn't come out productively in the narration. Ethan Hawke as the non-heroic personality ought to and does crave for a complex character as such, there is a lot to dig in and he does.
Chris Pratt, the surprising package, as the baddie, is utterly difficult to swallow. More importantly, because he has been playing beloved characters that breathes crowd-pleasing behavior. And yet, Dane DeHaan, amidst this crowd, gets quite a new spin in his character to portray it magnanimously; an opportunity missed, obviously. The Kid should have been a drama that it tries so hard to be and a showcase of D'Onofrio's skillful vocab over his self-created ruffian world, instead it is a Western- for sure- gone wrong and a drama misread.
This is such a massive disappointment for me. I wanted it to succeed so badly but it didn't. The biggest flaw of the film was the poorly told story. There is the plot involving Billy the Kid and the plot involving a pair of siblings on the run after killing their abusive father. Both storylines blend together poorly and never really form a coherent narrative. On top of that, The film criminally underused Chris Pratt, who finally took on the role of a villain. And it's such a freaking shame when you consider how stacked the cast is and how heavily D'Onofrio was involved in making this film (writing, directing and acting).