Boone Town Rats
Separated from his partner in crime, Jesse (David Carradine), when they gunned down a Mexican General on a train, Billy Young (Robert Walker) makes his way to Lordsburg, a small town with enough bad guys that they don't need another. But Sheriff Ben Kane (Robert Mitchum) decides to take the young outlaw under his wing and try and turn this mercenary into a law man whilst treating him with respect as he does Lily Beloit (Angie Dickinson) who works the saloon. But Ben has an ulterior motive for his actions as he wants revenge on Frank Boone (John Anderson) who was responsible for the death of his son and he plans to lure him to town.
There is a scene in "Young Billy Young" where Ben along with Billy ride shotgun on a stagecoach which is carrying an attractive young woman. But the thing about this scene, which watches the stagecoach travel cross country, is that it features one of those random musical accompaniments where we get cowbells, bottles, sudden shrills and all sorts of random noises squeezed together to make for a comically quirky soundtrack, almost as quirky as Robert Mitchum singing the song over the opening credits. But then we get a scene where Ben meets Lily Beloit who has a reputation and suddenly we get this romantic drama with a deep beauty to it as Ben treats her with respect. And yet we then get some dark intense scenes involving Ben's memories of his son being killed.
All of this makes "Young Billy Young" one of those westerns which have various personalities as one minute you get some humour then some romance and then some thing darker and it works. Part of it works is due to some thing we discover half way through when Ben and Billy have an encounter with some outlaws, including jess, when they are riding shotgun and with out giving any major spoiler away you can see where these storylines are going to overlap with various connections between the characters.
Unfortunately whilst "Young Billy Young" is entertaining with these different elements and connections it just doesn't end up a great western and that comes down to the action side of things not being as great as it could be. In fact this is one of those movies where the action scenes end up feeling remarkably short and lacking the excitement that they deserve.
What this all boils down to is that "Young Billy Young" is a good western with plenty of things which are good about it. Yet at the same time it is a western where the action scenes end up letting it down as they are simply not exciting enough.
