Mark Reviews Movies: THE KID (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 7, 2019

If one knows the name Pat Garrett, that knowledge is probably tied to the life and, more importantly, the death of William Bonney. As for William Bonney, you probably don't know him by Henry McCarty, the name given him at his birth, but it's almost a guarantee that you've heard of Billy the Kid, Bonney's outlaw moniker.

To know that name, one doesn't even need to know about Billy the Kid's sad childhood or what he did that made him a criminal or how he died. Knowing the name is to associate it with a notorious outlaw who died young (There's a reason we never talk about "Bill the Middle-aged Man"), and that's enough. That's the power of legend, which The Kid examines with some thoughtfulness.

This is the story of Billy the Kid, played by Dane DeHaan with a devilish charm and an impish grin that are covering up some terrible, mournful pain. It's the tale of his capture by a by-the-books lawman, a local Sheriff commissioned by law enforcement of the federal government to track down and bring the young and notorious thief and killer to justice. It's also the story of the outlaw's refusal to see justice brought down upon him without a fight.

History, of course, demands that Billy's story as a hunted fugitive ends with relative speed, especially given the starting point of Andrew Lanham's screenplay. The Kid isn't long for his own picture, and that leaves a significant gap in the lives and the stories of those who are left behind. The biggest hole is in the life of Pat Garrett, the Sheriff who hunted Billy, tried to see things done in the proper and legal way, and ultimately took, as some might suggest to be, a less proper and perhaps cowardly way of ending Billy's outlaw ways.

Truth is as fickle as rumors are sticky and, for that matter, as legends are eternal. Because of and despite whatever he did, Billy became a perennial anti-hero—his name alone becoming a signifier of youthful rebellion and romantic criminality. If anyone speaks of Garrett, though, it is primarily as the man who killed Billy the Kid. The Sheriff's own death, murdered by someone, was so unimportant in the annals of history that historians still have no clue who pulled the trigger.

Garrett here is played by Ethan Hawke, as a stern lawman, yes, but also as a man who is tragically aware of how history will write—or, better, will barely bother to write—his story. Both men, the outlaw and his pursuer, are ones whose true natures are hidden by the outward personalities that would make them infamous or famously connected to the other. Lanham and director Vincent D'Onofrio clearly are fascinated by these connections, as well as what it means to be aware of living a legend as it unfolds. This story, then, becomes one of regret, of existential suffering, and, by the end, of putting up a fight against the power of legend. It might be a fruitless fight, but at least it means doing something good for the right reasons.

The tale of these men is framed by the story of a young boy named Rio (Jake Schur), who, with the help of his sister Sara (Leila George), kills his abusive father after the father beats the kids' mother to death. Their paternal uncle Grant (Chris Pratt, almost unrecognizable behind a beard and a coldly cruel demeanor) swears revenge for his brother's killing, sending Rio and Sara on the run toward an aunt in Santa Fe.

While evading their uncle, the two happen upon the temporary hideout of Billy and his gang, just as they're about to be ambushed by Garrett and his posse. There's a shootout, and Billy, seemingly outgunned and outflanked, surrenders. The brother and sister reveal themselves and, keeping quiet about what happened at home, ask the lawman for a safe ride to New Mexico. Since that's a stop where one of Billy's gang will be tried and hanged, Garrett agrees.

Rio's story is not important on its own merits. Instead, the kid is a way to see the Kid from the kind of mind that would grow up with romantic stories of such an outlaw, making his own destiny in the wild and in bustling towns of the frontier—stories that would become the foundation of the legends of the Old West.

He's also the sort who looks upon the lawman with a certain sense of dread—uncertain if Garrett's repeated questions about Rio's past are out of genuinely wanting to help or simply a trap. The film itself follows along with the thinking of passive, witness protagonist. At first, it presents Billy as a charismatic rebel, whose crimes are as trivial as they are unspecified, and Garrett as an icy threat to Rio's actual freedom and the general freedom that Billy represents.

As the trip toward Billy's ultimate fate progresses, though, the film's outlook on each man evolves. In a drunken confessional, Billy reveals how his past lines up with Rio's. Our final impression of the famous outlaw is not of a tough, carefree man up against the world but of a tortured young man who never got over being a wounded boy.

There's undeniable sadness to this portrait, and as the story invents a series of complications to keep the plot going after Billy's exit, The Kid finds a similar sadness in Garrett's predicament. The film presents something of a redemption for Garrett's place in this story, as he fights righteously and valiantly against pure villainy. The tragedy of it, which the lawman painfully knows, is that none of that means anything when you're the man who killed a bona fide legend.

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