On the Set : On ‘The Last Outlaw’s’ Trail : HBO SHOOTS ‘EM UP IN NEW MEXICO

Decked out in Western duds, Mickey Rourke squints in the bright sun and sits patiently on his horse while the prop master releases a flock of chickens from their cages onto the New Mexico prairie. As soon as director Geoff Murphy gives his signal, the actor springs into action, hollering at the top of his lungs as he gallops across the grassland with pistol blazing. In seconds, Rourke has nearly disappeared from sight behind a cloud of dust, gunsmoke and poultry feathers.

“We’ve got our hands full with that one,” chuckles one crew member, shaking his head at this sudden display of macho exuberance. “It’s a good thing that took us only one take.”

It’s been 13 years since Mickey Rourke played a cowboy--a bit part in Michael Cimino’s ill-fated “Heaven’s Gate”--so an occasional outburst of equestrian hijinks is easily forgiven.

“I like horses and riding,” Rourke shrugs later, during a break in filming HBO Pictures’ “The Last Outlaw” near Santa Fe. “I love being outdoors.”

It takes a while to get used to seeing the star of “9 1/2 Weeks” wearing a 10-gallon hat, chaps, spurs and leather vest. Yet the character Rourke plays should be familiar to anyone who’s followed the actor’s career since he first drew notice as the sleazy arsonist of “Body Heat.” In “The Last Outlaw,” Rourke is a smirking, slightly crazed bad guy named Graff, whom executive producer Merrill Karpf describes as “evil incarnate.”

While Rourke has spent a lot of time playing contemporary urban characters, “We felt he’d translate very well to this 19th-Century, anti-authoritarian renegade,” Karpf explains. “ He was our first choice.”

Emerging from a self-imposed two-year hiatus from motion pictures during which he resumed professional boxing in his native Miami, Rourke says he took the part of Graff because “it was a chance to do something different and the director was a little eccentric: He didn’t care about my reputation for supposedly being difficult.” Geoff Murphy, a lanky, low-key New Zealander who likes to have his Maori wife and children on the set when he’s filming, dismisses the bad rap on Rourke as unfounded gossip.

“Sure, there are things you have to be careful about, but I’ve had no problem with Mickey,” he says.

Set in the frontier West of 1880, “The Last” is about “really bad guys and slightly better bad guys,” says Dermot Mulroney with a laugh. Mulroney plays Eustis, an unscrupulous bank robber who has broken ranks with his irrational and somewhat more despicable partner-in-crime, Graff. Left for dead by Eustis and his fellow gang members after their falling out, Graff is captured by a pursuing posse but manipulates them to help take revenge on his former companions. Graff’s group chases Eustis and his men to the Mexican border, cruelly picking off members of the rival band one by one.

A classic shoot-’em-up in the Sam Peckinpah tradition, “The Last Outlaw” is short on dialogue but long on whinnying horseflesh, mortal combat and hot pursuit. The movie was filmed last spring at spectacular locations in and around Santa Fe, including the famous Galisteo set built for “Silverado” in the 1970s.

Pre-production for “The Last Outlaw” predated the latest cycle of cowpoke fever now gripping Holywood in the wake of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning “Unforgiven.” The timing was fortuitous, says Murphy, an Auckland-based director whose credits include the “Young Guns” series filmed in the nearby village of Cerrillos.

“The whole state is booked through the end of 1993,” observes Murphy, easily mistaken for a cast member in his wide-brimmed felt hat, floor-length leather coat and worn blue jeans. “We just got in under the wire.” The New Mexico Film Commission later confirms that a string of movies with Western themes are shooting in New Mexico this year, ranging from Lawrence Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp” (with Kevin Costner in the title role) to Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers.”

Unlike many in the latest crop of Westerns, “The Last Outlaw “ has no ambition beyond entertainment. The story is entirely fictional and, as producer Karpf puts it, “hearkens back to a time when things were a lot simpler.”

Cast and crew acceptance of “The Last Outlaw” as an indulgence of quick-draw action--not, as one technician puts it, “some pretentious $50-million period epic”--promotes a lighthearted mood on the set. After a veteran wrangler blows up at a greenhorn cast member who questions his horsemanship, then stomps away in a flurry of expletives, Rourke leans back in his saddle and punctures the tension with a roar of gleeful laughter: “That’s right, old man. You tell him how it’s done!”

Within minutes, the greenhorn has apologized and the wrangler is smiling.

Later, killing time between takes, Mulroney absently strums his mandolin and talks wistfully about playing a Wild West outlaw as if it were a refreshing stroll in the park.

“This is my fifth film in the past year,” he sighs, ticking off “Point of No Return,” “The Thing Called Love,” “Family Pictures” and “Silent Tongue.”

“The guns I can do without completely,” Mulroney allows, “but the horses are a helluva lot of fun and these are a great bunch of guys, including Mickey. The scenery is amazing and I’m having a wonderful time. What could be better?”

“The Last Outlaw” airs Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO.