The Wild Bunch (1969)

Director: Sam Peckinpah
Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sánchez, Ben Johnson

The Wild Bunch stands out from your classic westerns like The Magnificent Seven, the fearless heroes with great morals and ethics saving the day. Set in the early 1900's, The Wild Bunch tells the story of a rag-tag crew of gunslingers struggling to stay together and survive in the changing industrial world that has no need for them anymore.

William Holden plays Pike Bishop, leader of the Wild Bunch. After a botched robbery attempt in Texas, the remaining survivors of the bunch regroup in Mexico in the middle of a revolution, they run into Mexican warlord named Mapache who offers them $10,000 in gold to steal a US army shipment of guns and ammo. Meanwhile Deke Thorton (Played by Robert Ryan), former friend/companion of Pike's leads a group of bounty hunters trying to find and kill the bunch.

Director Sam Peckinpah was out to make a statement in this film going against all the cliche's that previous westerns had. The Wild Bunch have little to no morals, all they care about is money. The opening scene with the bank robbery establishes this, with one of the members harassing a woman in the bank sexually, and a few of them use civilians as human shields to escape the carnage. This movie is violent, savage and ugly with little heroics. One of the members is shot in the face during the escape and virtually blind, unlike other westerns where the leader decides to save him with the "leave no man behind attitude, Pike puts the poor soul out of his misery."

The major theme of the movie though is the end of the "old age of gunslingers/mercenaries". The setting in this movie was fascinating with the 1900's. Machine guns, automobiles, pump action shotguns and grenades make appearances. One of Mapache's military advisors is a German general who is interested in gathering some intelligence on American weapons. There is a particular scene at the beginning of this movie where some have a few large scorpions and army of ants encircled, the scorpions representing the old gunslingers, and the ants representing the new modern era which outnumbers and tramples the scorpions.

The Wild Bunch is a fascinating movie that stands out from the classic western. Despite dragging at a few parts, this film is excellent and a must watch for western aficionados. It has some great acting, and the action scenes are well shot and executed, I'll go as far to say that the opening/closing action sequences are some of the best in the genre's history. I would have love to see Deke Thorton be fleshed out more because it seemed the director was trying to compare him to Pike in that they were both gunslingers of a dying age.

The Verdicts: 4.0