Gunmen (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is...

Gunmen (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.) is the kind of picture people are talking about when they express concern over excessive screen violence. It exists only as an excuse to depict the piling up of bullet-riddled corpses. All you really need to know about its needlessly convoluted 1994 story is that it struggles in vain to play as a buddy movie, teaming up a straight-arrow bounty hunter (Mario Van Peebles), under contract to the Drug Enforcement Agency, and a goofy, small-time smuggler (Christopher Lambert) who inadvertently may hold the key to the location of a huge drug fortune.

Swoon (KCET Friday at 11 p.m.) is Tom Kalin’s high-style, low-budget 1992 take on the infamous Leopold-Loeb murder case of the ‘20s. In essence, Kalin presents with a chic tone of flat disaffectedness the well-known story of two rich, bored Chicago teenagers with above-the-law superiority complexes who kidnap and murder 12-year-old Bobby Franks for kicks. Kalin spells out the homosexual passion the somber Leopold (Craig Chester) felt for the handsome, reckless--and acquiescing--Loeb (Daniel Schlachet) but otherwise lets the viewer decide what their fate reveals about their era and themselves.

Trust the song and not the singer. Imagine: John Lennon (KCOP Saturday at 8 p.m.) is not the definitive Lennon film or testament. At its best, it’s a sensitive tribute; at its worst, it’s a hero-worshiping whitewash. But, given the treasury of music and material it offers us, this 1988 release doesn’t have to be a perfect, untainted view. For anyone who loved Lennon or the Beatles, this film has the power and tenderness to bring you to tears.

National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I (NBC Saturday at 9 p.m.), which sends up the “Lethal Weapon” series and many other cop-buddy bangathons, isn’t as funny as most of its targets. A collection of flat gags, spiritless action, cornball satire and bored-looking performances, it sometimes resembles the draggle-end of a nightmare “Saturday Night Live” show, where the cast has come to despise their own skits.

Movies to Tape

Wild Bill (TMC Sunday at 7:20 p.m.) Walter Hill’s 1995 revisionist western stars Jeff Bridges in the title role and Ellen Barkin as Calamity Jane.

Les Miserables (KCET Saturday at 9 p.m.) This admirable 1935 Hollywood version of the classic Victor Hugo novel stars Fredric March and Charles Laughton.