Kid

A fairly obvious attempt to refashion High Plains Drifter for youthful audiences, and for about two minutes it looks like it might be fun. It isn't. A mysterious stranger rides into town on a Greyhound. When a couple of local thugs give him strife, Kid leaves them begging for mercy. He checks into an empty motel. Then people start to die strange, perverse deaths. Kid? Uh-huh. Any film that devises a murder from a tennis ball and a can of bug spray may claim some ingenuity, but Kid just isn't trashy enough for its own good. Instead of nihilistic exploitation, we get half-cocked teen romance and a tiresomely sentimental vigilante. Howell is no substitute for Clint Eastwood, and love interest Trigger gives an unspeakably awful performance. Such relief as there is comes from R Lee Ermey as Sheriff Luke Clanton, who extends the nice range in invective he first shared with us in Full Metal Jacket. 'Seems to me' he cautions 'you stuck your dick in the wrong hole, Slick'. Quite.