The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

Paul Newman has lots of fun playing the legendary hanging judge, and Ava Gardner is a ravishing Lily Langtry, the object of Bean's unrequited love. [18 Aug 1991, p.6]

With a two-fisted script by John Milius (who later wrote Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn), Huston and Newman created a raucous, Rabelaisian, revisionist western of the sort popular at the time.

It leaves itself wide open to charges of pretentiousness. Yet "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" is so entertaining and so vigorously performed, especially by Newman in the title role, that its pretensions become part of its robust, knock-about style.

A rambling revisionist western whose episodic nature was only marginally successful and which didn't come close to BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID on any level.

Newman does a remarkable John Huston impression, and screenwriter John Milius demonstrates once again that he went to film school.

The overkill and the underdone do it in.

Despite the direction of John Huston, this story of a self-appointed Western judge (Paul Newman) isn't one of anyone's best. [06 Apr 1990, p.71]