Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Handgun (1982)

Director: Tony Garnett

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Garnett's first American movie, set in Dallas, is a curious amalgam of 'concerned' docudrama and Lipstick-style exploitation. Kathleen (Young), a nice Irish Catholic girl from Boston, squares up to the cowboy charmer (Day) who dates her and then rapes her at gunpoint. Unfortunately for the film's sexual politics, Kathleen opts for rough justice the Charles Bronson way, arming herself with a new 'masculinised' image (cropped hair, combat gear), a handgun and sharpshooting skills, before luring the baddie out to a midnight face-off and dumping him symbolically outside the County Courthouse. Garnett is clearly as seduced as his heroine by Wild West frontier mythology and life in the Lone Star state. Misfiring as serious social commentary, this ends up, beneath its veneer of casual naturalism, as a pseudo-feminist vigilante movie that celebrates the attitudes it affects to deplore.

Author: SJo 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Tony Garnett

Producer: Tony Garnett

Cast: Karen Young, Clayton Day, Suzie Humphreys, Helena Humann, Ben Jones full cast

Genre(s): Thrillers

Duration: 101 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.