Forget ‘Unforgiven,’ This 43% Rotten Tomatoes Western Classic Made The Genre Cool Again

By the mid-’80s, Westerns were running on fumes. Once Hollywood’s most dominant storytelling engine, the Old West had been largely pushed aside by the rise of urban cop thrillers and the muscle-bound spectacle of Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicles. Audiences were more interested in modern crime stories than in frontier justice. While Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven would ultimately restore prestige to the genre in the early-’90s, it was 1988’s Young Guns that first jolted Westerns back into the pop culture mainstream—repackaging dusty mythology with youthful swagger for a new generation.

What made Young Guns feel fresh in 1988 was its savvy casting. The film tapped directly into the 'Brat Pack'–adjacent star power dominating youth cinema at the time. Emilio Estevez led the charge as Billy the Kid and was joined by Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, and Dermot Mulroney. Critics weren’t exactly kind:Young Guns holds a 43% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviews dismissing it as style over substance. But the target audience—MTV-raised moviegoers—embraced it. Its music video energy, photogenic ensemble, and rebellious tone helped it become a cable and VHS cult classic, eventually spawning Young Guns II and, decades later, fueling ongoing interest in a long-gestating third installment with Estevez in the director’s chair.

What Is 'Young Guns' About?

Set during the Lincoln County War in New Mexico, Young Guns follows a group of young “Regulators” deputized to protect the business interests of English rancher John Tunstall (Terence Stamp). After Tunstall is murdered by a rival faction backed by corrupt authorities, Billy the Kid (Estevez) and the Regulators set out on a revenge mission that quickly escalates into open warfare. What begins as sanctioned justice spirals into outlaw notoriety as the men become hunted themselves, blurring the line between lawmen and criminals.

The narrative tracks Billy’s psychological evolution as much as the group’s physical journey. Estevez plays him not as a mustache-twirling outlaw but as an unpredictable, wounded kid intoxicated by violence and loyalty. As the Regulators are picked off or driven into hiding, the film pivots from revenge Western to tragic mythmaking—charting how legends are born through bloodshed, media exaggeration, and the desperation of youth boxed into violent destinies.

‘Young Guns’ Captures the Feel of an MTV Video

What truly made Young Guns revolutionary for its time wasn’t the plot—it was the attitude. Director Christopher Cain (The Principal, The Next Karate Kid) shot the West like an MTV music video, emphasizing slow-motion gunfights, stylized lighting, and kinetic editing that echoed contemporary action cinema. The Regulators weren’t grizzled veterans; they were reckless, joking, emotionally raw young men. Campfire scenes played like dorm-room bonding sessions, complete with pranks, confessions, and testosterone-fueled bravado. The film reframed the Western posse as something closer to a band of brothers in a war film—or even a touring rock band riding from town to town.

Several sequences underline this tonal shift. One standout moment features the group high on peyote, laughing under desert skies as Billy fires his gun in manic exhilaration. It’s surreal, dangerous, and weirdly joyful—capturing the reckless sense of invulnerability. Another key scene comes during the Regulators’ first retaliatory strike, staged less as solemn justice and more as a kinetic ambush, complete with quips and swagger. These moments rejected the stoic solemnity of classic Western heroes in favor of impulsive, emotional anti-heroes.

Central to the film’s legacy is its rebranding of Billy the Kid as a pop icon. Historically depicted as either a villain or a tragic footnote, Billy here becomes a charismatic rebel—part outlaw, part punk rock frontman. Estevez plays him with wild-eyed intensity, delivering laughs one minute and cold-blooded violence the next. His Billy is theatrical, unpredictable, and magnetic, making it easy to see why younger audiences gravitated toward him. He wasn’t John Wayne’s moral cowboy; he was an ’80s anti-hero in a duster coat.

‘Young Guns’ Re-Energized Westerns in Hollywood

Young Guns also modernized the genre’s moral framework. Authority figures are corrupt, business interests manipulate justice, and loyalty among the Regulators supersedes legal codes. This anti-establishment streak mirrored the political cynicism of late-’80s youth culture. In that sense, Young Guns wasn’t just reviving Western aesthetics—it was translating frontier mythology through a contemporary lens of distrust, rebellion, and identity-seeking.

Its influence echoed beyond its sequel. The movie proved studios could market Westerns to younger demographics if packaged with the right stars, music, and pacing. Its influence is visible in later youth-skewing Western hybrids such as TV’s The Young Riders with Josh Brolin and even in the way historical outlaws were reimagined in ’90s cinema. It made the Old West feel accessible again—not as a relic, but as a playground for modern storytelling energy.

While Unforgiven would go on to win Oscars and restore the Western’s critical prestige—and Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves would cement its awards-season legitimacy—Young Guns deserves credit for keeping the genre alive in the years just before that renaissance. It bridged the gap between the commercial decline of the Western and its eventual critical rebirth.

Young Guns is available to stream on Prime Video in the US.