As the Film After 11 podcast nears the end of its alphabetical marathon, we’re stuck with the letter “Y” and not a lot of good choices for a 12-year-old to watch. I very nearly picked the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, but had reviewed that myself just last year and wasn’t too eager to watch it again so soon. At the very last minute, I had a change of heart and selected the Brat Pack western Young Guns, only to realize after we’d recorded that the movie was rated R, which I’d set a rule not to do for the podcast. Whoops.

That R rating was mostly for violence, I’m sure. Thankfully, my son Thomas wasn’t too traumatized by that. He’s seen worse in some of the video games he plays. In any case, he didn’t care for the movie at all, and that had nothing to do with its rating.

As for the quality of the film itself, I’d never thought all that highly of it before, and think even less of it now. It’s shallow and dumb, with many terrible performances from actors I know are capable of better (and a few who may not be). On the guilty please scale, I suppose it’s somewhat enjoyable, but less so than I remembered or wanted it to be. Even at age 12, Thomas wasn’t having any of it.

Title:	Young Guns
Year of Release:	1988
Director:	Christopher Cain
Watched On:	Fandango at Home (rental)
Also Available On:	4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Blu-ray Amazon Prime Video Pluto TV Various VOD rental and purchase platforms

Video Streaming

Of course I don’t own a copy of Young Guns. Why would I? The movie was released on Blu-ray in 2006 and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray in 2023, and I never had interest in buying either. For a one-time watch, I instead rented from Fandango at Home, which offers it for 4K streaming. That’s good enough for my purposes.

The 4K, 1.85:1 image is fine. I don’t have much to say about it beyond that. The first part of the opening credits are black-and-white and heavily grainy by design, but that grain has a weird texture I’m at a loss to describe. Still, it’s only about a minute of screen time before the transition to color. Footage under the remaining credits looks very soft, but snaps into better focus after the optical composites are done.

The movie’s still very grainy throughout, but sharpness is adequate. However, the HDR grading causes a lot of black crush and loss of shadow detail in darker scenes. I can’t say whether that’s a streaming compression issue or is present on physical media as well.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack has some fun surround effects with gunshots echoing and bullets zinging to the back of the room. The gunfire itself doesn’t hit particularly hard. It sounds better in some scenes than others.

Related

• Charlie Sheen
  • Wall Street (1987)
• Kiefer Sutherland
  • The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023)
  • Rabbit Hole (2023)
  • Stand By Me (1986)
• Terence Stamp
  • The Limey (1999)

Note: All screenshots on this page were grabbed off a web browser, and came out looking much softer than actually watching the movie from a proper streaming device. They are used for illustration purposes only.