The Left Handed Gun

The film is about western outlaw Billy the Kid, who was in fact right-handed.

The "Englishman" describes his origins as from Ayrshire, a county in South West Scotland.

In that case he would be a Scot and not English.

Arthur Penn directed this obscure(and umpteenth) filming of the story of Billy The Kid(William Bonny) Paul Newman(utterly miscast) plays Billy as a misunderstood and pensive youth who merely wanted to avenge the death of his employer, an expatriate Englishman and cattle rancher murdered by a corrupt sheriff and his men because they didn't want the competition. Billy hunts down and kills the men responsible, but becomes a wanted criminal as a result.

Billy the Kid seeks revenge for the murder of his employer. This oft-told tale gets the psychological treatment in this account based on a play by Gore Vidal.

Billy Bonney is taken in by kindly rancher John Tunstall, he starts to learn respect and education, but then Tunstall is cruelly murdered. Bonney having been robbed of the one man he respected, shows his darker side and vows to seek revenge on Tunstall's killers.

I saw this movie when i was 16 the first time. i have watched it on TV & tape a 100 times.

The Left handed Gun (1958) ** (out of 4) William Bonney (Paul Newman) is the subject of this Western who seeks revenge for the death of a friend and becomes known as Billy the Kid. As he goes for his revenge the young gun slinger meets Pat Garrett (John Dehner) and the two strike up a friendship.

While wandering in a desert area with the saddle of his deceased horse on his back, the drifter William "Billy the Kid" Bonney (Paul Newman) stumbles with the cattle owner John "The Englishman" Tunstall (Colin Keith-Johnston) that asks him what he wants and William asks for a job. Tunstall hires him to help to bring his cattle to Lincoln to sell the herd to the army and William befriends him.

Arthur Penn's directional debut is a revolutionist vision of the legend of Billy the Kid. In it he first approached a theme that would characterize all of his subsequent films: an alienated outsider who meets a hostile environment.

Arthur Penn, unintentionally or not, had a lot of movies that included an outsider or an outcast or outlaw- 'out' being the word and not really in- and The Left Handed Gun was the first. It's actually a pretty conventional movie, with a conventional story set around the iconic Billy the Kid tale and how William Bonnie (Paul Newman) goes from illiterate Texan who has a dark past to getting revenge on a sheriff and then getting into more trouble with further killings until finally meeting his maker at the hands of Pat Garrett.

Probably the best film of the Billy The Kid story, although it is a bit over-dramatic, Paul Newman shows what a great dramatic actor he was, and John Dehner is great as Pat Garrett, Lita Milan provides the beauty, and what a beauty, whilst all the other's have since passed away, she still lives in Madrid now in her late 80's.The film is directed well by Arthur Penn, and is well made, the music is over dramatic though and the B&W film of the day does not help with photography, this would benefit from being translated into colour if they can.