Unlike the first film, which was more of an ensemble piece, "Young Guns II" attempts to concentrate primarily on the tenuous relationship between Billy and Garrett. There's no depth to this, mind you, but it does make the film more interesting than it might otherwise have been. Unfortunately for fans, it also provides a lot less screen time for Sutherland and Phillips.

Estevez is no Dustin Hoffman, but he pulls off the old-age bit quite well, and as the young Billy he's quite good at displaying the swaggering youthful demeanor that befits this deadeye shot who became a notorious, glamorized outlaw.

How unfortunate then that screenwriter John Fusco and director Geoff Murphy allow the film to settle into a series of vignettes that are alternately amusing and banal, with such ridiculous exploitive touches as the 14-year-old boy losing his virginity (a rehash of a similar moment with Casey Siemaszko in the first film) and the scene that has Jenny Wright, as a prostitute friend of Billy's, riding out of town a la Lady Godiva. (It's also interesting to note that in this male-macho film, the only significant female character is required to remove her clothes.)

We won't mention the Bon Jovi songs or the quick cameo by Jon Bon Jovi himself.

Sumptuously shot, very well-acted and full of potential, "Young Guns II" nonetheless remains a disappointment. And for those of us who would like to see Westerns revived, it is a double disappointment.

(Trivia buffs should note that James Coburn, who played Pat Garrett in Sam Peckinpah's 1973 "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," has a cameo here as a cattle baron who talks this film's Garrett into becoming sheriff.)

"Young Guns II" is rated PG-13 but certainly deserves an R, with considerable violence and the requisite sex, nudity, profanity and vulgarity.