6/10
Prairie juvenile delinquent
2 June 2016
A whole lot of people have played Billy The Kid on screen and their personas have formed one mixed image. Off the top of my head I can think of B picture cowboy stars Johnny Mack Brown and Buster Crabbe, movie star idol Robert Taylor, method actor Paul Newman, Rhodes scholar Kris Kristofferson, and brat packer Emilio Estevez. But scruffy Michael J. Pollard is probably closest to what Billy actually was. It also gave Pollard his only lead in a film.

Of course this too has nothing to do with the facts. Dirty Little Billy concentrates on his formative years compressed as they would be for anyone who died short of his 22 birthday. It starts with his arrival in New Mexico Territory with his mother and stepfather and ends with some of his first recorded killings.

Our Billy is a kid from the mean streets of New York and he's got an aversion to the hard work it takes to be a pioneer. No farming, no business trade, but Pollard does like hanging around the saloon with some new friends Richard Evans and Lee Purcell.

The Lincoln County War, Pat Garrett all this comes a bit later in the life of our prairie juvenile delinquent. Pollard is always interesting and quirky be it a Disney film like Summer Magic or with outlaw legends of a more modern era like Bonnie And Clyde.

Dirty Little Billy is one unique Mr. Bonney.
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