This gunfire-packed sequel turns its back on what we learned at the end of Young Guns about the fates of its characters and tells another, darker, maybe truer story of Billy the Kid and his merry men. Director Geoff Murphy, a New Zealander, brings an Antipodean look to the Wild West - all browns, golds and searing blues, with scarcely a patch of green in sight. Against this backdrop, he gives us vividly rounded portraits of the characters involved, emphasised by frequent close-ups: Emilio Estevez, cackling maniacally as Billy - still very much the kid: 'I aim to play the game,' he says, meaning only partly to see things through. Kiefer Sutherland's Doc, reluctantly dragged back to outlawry by a federal dragnet, Lou Diamond Phillips' superstitious Mexican Indian, CSI's William Petersen's tortured turncoat Pat Garrett and The Lord of the Rings' Viggo Mortensen's nasty, sardonic Irish John Poe are all sharply sketched. James Coburn is in it too, as land boss John Chisum: only a 'bit', but as authoritatively Coburn as ever. And Christian Slater's headstrong, self-centred Arkansas Dave lends a cutting edge to the gang's constant flight from the law. A major Western that has a strikingly rousing score by Alan Silvestri.