The Outlaw was great! Spoiler alert....!

I just saw this yesterday 8-10-08, and I loved it! To watch it you have to bring with you the same forgiveness that you bring to any movie made in the '30's,'40s,'50's, or any other time "way back when". Some Buster Keaton movies today would seem stupid and ludicrous, but when viewed with an eye for the time period in which they were made, can be recognized as classics.
The directing was superb; from the beginning scene to every camera angle that followed. Plus the characters were supposed to be dangerous outlaws, no matter their demeanor of the moment. There was no time when I did not get this from both Beutel and Huston. Pat Garrett was supposed to be tricky and a dangerous rascal, and Thomas Mitchell pulled that off famously. The music may seem comical by todays standards, but it got the job done; some of the confrontational scenes were so tense that I was on the edge of my seat! And the music contributed to it, presaging coming events and promising others, like the scene when everyone was waiting to see if Pat Garrett would indeed shoot Billy in the back as history had already reported that it happened. I love the way that they handled the sex scene when Rio "nursed him back to health". Until I visited this forum I had mistook the sexual attention shown by Huston as (severely) misplaced admiration, of one dangerous person for another. It seemed as though Huston recognized in this person at last an equal that he could hang around with, instead of the "civilians" he was surrounded by, who admired and feared him and other outlaws like him, but could never understand him or stand their ground with him as an equal. I have seen exactly the same type of theme in some of the best anime, the only difference being that the outlaws in those stories also sometimes have some super power, or extraordinary abilities, making them "above" everyone else in the story. Like in Cowboy Beebop sometimes Spike Seigel would meet a character whose abilities rivaled his own (no easy feat). And even though they were on opposite sides, there would be a grudging admiration. If they had been both outlaws instead, then there might have been the same situation as the one portrayed between Breutel(Billy) and Huston(Doc Holliday). I agree with someone's assessment that Pat Garret's unexpected outburst at the end sounded exactly like the jilted raving of a flaming queen. But at the same time, you have to admire the man's commitment to his art. That scene was Very well played, he made me believe it; Jesus you could feel that man's pain...
The only slightly bad acting in the whole movie was Rio at the end; such an abrupt change from her sultry sexy Marie Presley angry pouting to an instantaneous burst of pure joy was a bit much. It needed a little more direction in that scene. After all she had been cast aside by this callous person, would she be quite so "take me I'm all yours", or would she be joyous, but with enough of the sultriness to let us know that she was no longer an innocent wide-eyed victim and would maybe even exhibit some amount of control over her/their destiny from now on? Some people mention the kissing scene as overacting, but I thought that it was cute, her pretty pouty little mouth getting closer and closer. But I don't think that they quite nailed it there at the end; they should have done just a couple more takes, it wasn't perfect.
What I see when I see that scene is not an attempt to be entirely serious, but a little sarcasm. I saw that in some other scenes too, and some of the best serious movies are those that can laugh at themselves sometimes, in little "Easter egg" scenes here and there. Bottom line, I would recommend this movie to anyone. I thought that Howard Hughes was an aircraft designer who made a fortune selling planes during wartime; I had no idea that he directed movies on the side? Basically call it what you will the tension between Pat Garrett and Holliday and Billy whether homoerotic tension or whatever, was Good tension, and made for Very good drama, aided in no small part by the complimentary score, in my honest opinion, and I am putting this at the top of my list for (old)good dramatic film-making.