Simply A Masterpiece

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Sam Peckinpah's revisionist Western epic is venerated for its astute end-of-an-era nostalgia, the hard-boiled action spectacles, a trenchantly felt brotherly camaraderie and the go-for-broke self-assurance that bluntly depreciates mortality into triviality. Bestriding the frontier between USA and Mexico, THE WILD BUNCH takes place in the early 20th Century when a modern revolution is heralded by the advancement of railroads, a novel machine gun and an archetypal automobile, that soon will drive horse-riding to the verge of obsoleteness. The Mexican desert is still expansive and awe-inspiringly impressive, particularly against the golden rays of a westering sun in a panoptic arrangement, but its inhabitants are dogged by civil wars, and our titular bunch of gringo trigger-happy gunslingers (save for one Mexican, Angel) are aiming for one last bountiful swag before time is running out on their old games. Opening with a grandiosely rowdy shootout when the bunch robs a railroad office, Peckinpah makes on bones about decimating innocent bystanders during the helter-skelter crossfire, and often shows the carnage through children's excited eyes, cross-cut with the shots of a scorpion dropped onto an anthill, devoured by ants, then set on fire altogether by these rubbernecking kids, Peckinpah hammers home to us that violence is an elemental impulse that resides inside every human being, a constituent of our original sin, the process of deglamorizing and demystifying it is very much against the tenet of the genre it denotes, and contributes a perspicacious tonic to give the dying form one last hurrah!After the ambush, only six living souls have survived, with a posse of bounty hunters breathing down their necks, led by Deke Thornton (Ryan), the erstwhile parter of the gang's leader Pike Bishop (Holden), it all seems like the usual cat-and-mouse chasing game, but it isn't. The sextet crosses the Rio Grande and soon hatches a plan to steal a shipment of weaponry from a USA army train and sell them to General Mapache (Fernández, crassly rebarbative) of Mexican Federal Army in exchange of gold coins, a time-honored ploy of selling massive-killing weapons to an embattled country for monetary gains, a scourge attendant with the entire human history. The team makes a triumphant derring-do to wrest the arms even with Thornton's posse giving chase unexpectedly (culminated by a bridge detonation money shot), but bad blood (both personally and politically) between the young Angel (Sánchez, doesn't degrade his character into a racial cliché) and General Mapache turns their success into a jittery impasse when Angel is captured and physically tortured under the order of the callous Mapache, with paycheck securely in their hands, will the rest of the bunch leave one of them in the lurch? At one point, Peckinpah archly teases us that it would be the case, since Pike has no qualms in deserting his long-time gang member Freddie Sykes (O'Brien) when the latter is shot (not fatally) by one of Thornton's men. But inexplicably, or maybe under the influence of post-coital blues, the remaining gang of four: Pike, his right-hand man Dutch Engstrom (a game Borgnine) and the two Gorch brothers (Oates and Johnson, often saddled with comic crassness), valiantly makes their final request of releasing Angel, which ultimately set off a kamikaze 4-versus-200 pitched battle (consonant with Peckinpah's philosophy on violence, human shields are frequently employed, a luscious girl can be liquidated if she dares to shoot behind one's back), but before all that, an utterly left-field moment crops up which perfectly elucidates what is the unthinkable and almost droll calm before the tempest, this is Peckinpah's most staggering coup de maître! A robust ensemble made of nearly exclusively by men, William Holden exhibits a true leader's flair competently and compassionately, weather-beaten, bedeviled by the guilty of choosing expediency in the face of danger, he makes the death wish roundly poignant and rousing which otherwise very likely would plunge into empty heroism if someone hams it up. Robert Ryan, counterpoising his ostensible villain designation, is pregnant with a sublime tint of self-resignation, world-weariness and fatalism, only seeps a vestige of hope amid the plaintive coda, of a pièce-de-résistence which finds the perfect equilibrium between idealism and praxis.

"If they move, kill em'!" exclaims Pike Bishop, leader of an ageing band of outlaws who are in the midst of holding up a railroad payroll office in a small Texas town. However the "wild" west is no more and it's inhabitants are becoming more civilised. Deke Thornton(a former associate of Pike's who is now working for the railroad)and his posse ambush the gang resulting in a bloody shootout which needlessly claims many innocent lives. The robbery a failure, Pike and the surviving members of the gang flee across the border into revolution-torn Mexico pursued by Thornton and his posse. It isn't long before Pike and the bunch fall in with ruthless bandit chief Mapache, who coerces them into stealing arms from the U.S army in return for thousands of dollars in gold. Pike and his compatriots become increasingly disillusioned with life as they know it and end up betraying Mapache, ultimately deciding to go out all guns blazing in one of the most spectacular bloodbaths Hollywood has ever seen!.Sam Peckinpah's savage essay on the decline of the American frontier disgusted critics of the day solely due to the extremity of the violence, even at a time when audiences of the world were being increasingly desensitised by horrific images of the Vietnam war. The Wild Bunch has since become a highly respected cult film which, despite the brutality of it's content, explores the more tender issues of friendship, honour and redemption. It can also be interpreted as a comment on the dying(or dead)western genre itself. Peckinpah conveys his thoughts and feelings in an aggressively overt way, which is what makes the film all the more fantastic. The lives of the main characters are epitomised by greed, murder and other forms of amoral self indulgence, although the movie depicts brilliantly how deep reflection coupled with fate can alter the moral compass of even such violent individuals and instil in them a sense of dignity and self-respect to the point where they attempt to put things right(which is ironically represented in the brutal climax). William Holden gave a superb performance as Pike Bishop, leader of The Wild Bunch. Ernest Borgnine was equally impressive as his second-in-command, Dutch as were Warren Oates and Ben Johnson as the Gorch brothers, not to mention Robert Ryan as Pike's former ally Deke Thornton. I think Edmond O'Brien gave the best performance in the film next to William Holden, as cranky old timer Freddie Sykes. Peckinpah also co-wrote the great script and excellent lines are in abundance, I also detected a few pinches of terrifically cynical black comedy.The Wild Bunch is bookended with two magnificent but vicious shootouts. The first which opens the movie is a rollicking warm up for what is to come. Taut slow motion intercutting would appear as a rudimentary manifestation in Peckinpah's subsequent efforts but it is here that the chilling technique makes it's amazing debut. Almost baroque in execution, the riotous climax is nothing more than totally unashamed chaos!. The bodycount in this sequence alone is stratospheric and watching Pike and the bunch get torn apart by unrelenting gunfire as they fight for control of the machine gun is a truly spectacular sight!. The bunch seem almost indestructible for the duration of this excessively violent orgy until their bodies are literally blasted away from the machine gun, with Pike still gripping hold of it's trigger and spraying bullets as he dies!.It can be said that this Peckinpah classic is the western to end all westerns(with stiff competition from Leone's The Good, The Bad And The Ugly!).This scabrous homage to tough men who have become relics of a blood stained chapter in American history is as harsh as it needs to be. 10/10

The Wild Bunch (1969): Dir: Sam Peckinpah / Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oats, Ben Johnson, Robert Ryan: Symbolic western masterpiece wherein the term "wild" regards our declining attitude towards violence. The film introduces four aged gunfighters who obey a code. They do not believe in torture but stress that getting in the way of fire is a bad idea. It opens with children huddled around to the delight of seeing two scorpions being tortured by ants. The scorpions symbolize the Bunch while the ants are the rebels they will engage in graphic gunfire. Director Sam Peckinpah brought violent cinema to a whole new level as well as creates one of the greatest and most sincere westerns ever made. William Holden is flawless as the leader joined by Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oats and Ben Johnson, all of whom are effective. They are also being pursued by a bounty hunter who was formerly one of them. He is played by Robert Ryan who knows them and can counter their moves. They have witnessed the very core of violent nature and can only foresee a future of brutal consequence. There are three gunfights that involve severe civilian casualties but the film is really about violence through generations particularly when children joyfully chase after a jeep dragging an Indian behind it. "Boy, do I hate to see that," reserves the worn men who have seen it all before. Score: 10 / 10

Watching "The Wild Bunch", you can't shake the feeling that, well not necessarily that they don't make 'em like this anymore, but . . . well, maybe they don't. Featured herein is a band of over-the-hill gunfighters, a violent statement on the dying Old West, and heightened levels of violence to bring the point right home. Not to mention a rugged cast to bring these characters to life. And even with all of the weapons fire and blood squibs, there's an endearing sense of honor at the heart of all of this - personified by the beautifully-cast William Holden.7/10