Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017)

I thought the big improvement in westerns is that they're now anti-hanging. Lynching people is monstrous and old westerns were made at a time when it was still going on.

But I just watched a western on Netflix called The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017) starring Bill Pullman who was then about 63 as an aging cowboy who goes after the man who murdered his partner. It was somewhat pro-hanging. There were three hangings or attempted hangings in the movie and two out of three were presented as not being entirely bad.

One big improvement over old westerns is that they let a young boy played by Diego Josef shoot a few people. I think he was about fourteen. I wasn't sure if he was a boy or a girl at first. It was refreshing after more than a century of westerns where kids and women never got to kill anyone.

Killing someone in a movie has to be a proud moment for any young boy. I remember when E.T. came out. They reported that Henry Thomas went into acting because he secretly wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. They reported this as if he should have been satisfied doing a movie where he cries and cries over a dead space alien.

Of course, in the old movies they didn't kill or seriously injure women or children, either. And I think Diego did cry a little, although it was because he got shot. 

I wrote a western story. A young boy was going out for an extended time on the range. I had him bring along some heroin. It was legal at the time and I wanted him to have some pain relief if he were horribly injured with no hope of getting help.

Couldn't find a picture of him killing anyone, but there he is.