X
- 1969
- R
- 2 h 25 m
- 1969
- R
- 2 h 25 m
Summary An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them.
Directed By: Sam Peckinpah
Written By: Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner, Sam Peckinpah
- 1969
- R
- 2 h 25 m
- 1969
- R
- 2 h 25 m
The Wild Bunch
7.6
Where to Watch
Summary An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them.
Directed By: Sam Peckinpah
Written By: Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner, Sam Peckinpah
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 20 Critic Reviews
98
95% Positive
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
5% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 20 Critic Reviews
98
95% Positive
19 Reviews
19 Reviews
5% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
From The Godfather to Heat, the stamp of The Wild Bunch is self-evident. Italian director Carlo Carlei summed up the debt owed to the film and its director when he said, "There is a chain of inspiration like The Bible... Everything comes from Peckinpah."
It remains one of the best-written and best-performed American films of all time.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 51 User Ratings
7.6
78% Positive
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
16% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
6% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 51 User Ratings
7.6
78% Positive
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
16% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
6% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
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Maybe the best shoot-'em-up ever made, the one that turned meanness into a haunting pictorial poetry and summed up the corruption of guilt, old age and death in the American fantasy of the Old West.
The Wild Bunch still retains its sorrowful, fatal power because of the complexity of Peckinpah's attitudes about violence. He forces us to confront our own voyeuristic ambivalence; we're alternately horrified by the butchery and exhilarated by the orgiastic energy his balletic spectacles stir up.
The on-screen carnage established a new level in American movies, but few of the films that followed in its wake could duplicate Peckinpah's depth of feeling.
In purely cinematic terms, the film is a savagely beautiful spectacle, Lucien Ballard's superb cinematography complementing Peckinpah's darkly elegiac vision.
Film at 145 minutes is far over-length, and should be tightened extensively, particularly in first half. After a bang-up and exciting opening, it appears that scripters lost sight of their narrative to drag in Mexican songs, dancing and way of life, plus an overage of dialog, to the detriment of action.
“We're not gonna get rid of anybody! We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished! *We're* finished! All of us!”
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Amazing cowboy film with some bloody scenes and I understand how this got sensored didn't get released in some countries because holy s from the 60s. This is really bloody.A movie about adult children that is so spectacular to watch these guys who trying to figure out. What the hell to do. It feels like the end of an arrow. It is the end of a word the wast was almost at an end World War 1 was coming around the corner and then this would all be silly and childish, which it is but it's just so poetic but with likeable **** movie feels like they are characters from a different error which I think because they're using modern World War One weapons, which give it a weird feeling it's a Western movie but with new weapons and the characters live by code, but the law is finally catching up to them. They are no longer in a simple time. They are in the modern time and they have to **** is intense it is men living by a code. They said for themselves which means they are horrible pieces of s but I could not look away and it shuts so well. I didn't feel like this was an old movie it felt like a contemporary film so I really enjoyed it and with recommend it.
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I'm embarrassed. The score associated with this review should be much higher, but here we are. Let me be clear, I do like "The Wild Bunch" and appreciate everything it is, with its unflinching depiction of violence paving the way for some of cinema's most impactful films and filmmakers. In fact, I'm comfortable saying that the opening and closing gunfights in this are absolutely perfect. Damn near everything between them, however, pales in comparison. I just couldn't find anything to latch on to when it came to these characters, save for maybe Ernest Borgnine's "Dutch Engstrom," probably the only stand-up guy in the whole picture. Everybody else either falls somewhere between stoic blank slate (i.e. William Holden's "Pike Bishop") or literal pile (Jaime Sanchez's "Angel). This hampers the weight of the ending, as well as everything that comes before it. Big hat-in-hand hours here, but it is what it is. Wish I liked this more.
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The problem with this film is that a great deal of time is spent showing the protagonists laughing, drinking, and wenching, and riding horses here and there, and after ten or fifteen minutes of this it starts getting very old.
The other problem, of course, is that the protagonists are all bad guys. They're not antiheros. You need to have some redeeming characteristics to qualify as an antihero. And if you're going to carry a movie you need some redeeming characteristics. Don Corleone had his family "honor." Tommy DeVito made for a funny psycho. William Holden and company are all fine actors, but their characters are dry as dust and we the audience are supposed to sympathize because they're ageing out of the outlaw business and the times they are a-changing. So never mind that they shoot up a bunch of civilians and a bunch of fellas from the US Army. Never mind that they shoot up a bunch of guys from the army of Mexico. We're supposed to go along with this. And, sorry, but I ain't buying.
Sure, the bad guys do a couple of things that might be described as "nice," but there's nothing in the film to explain why these particular characters would do things like this, since gold and profit seem to be their only motivation.
I wondered if my criticism of the film might be unfair because, after all, it was shot in 1969. Things were different then. But then I discovered that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was also shot in 1969, and that, as I recall, was a film about bad guys too, but a far far far more successful attempt at entertainment.
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Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 2 Nominations
Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
Laurel Awards
• 2 Nominations
