The Wild Bunch
- Jun 17
- 2 min read
The Wild Bunch is one of my favorite movies. It’s in my top five, for sure.
Made in 1969, it’s an epic western directed by Sam Peckinpah, with a cast of veteran Hollywood actors: William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates and Edmund O’Brien. The Wild Bunch is a landmark work filled with artistic accomplishments in the way the film is edited and its revolutionary use of slow motion. Several great directors had already used these techniques for great dramatic effect, but Peckinpah broke new ground. In The Wild Bunch his intricate, quick-cut editing of multiple camera angles--mixing normal and slow-motion speeds--created a riveting, muscular style that shook viewers and thrust them into the heart of the action in a new way.
From the time the film was first released, however, it’s also been condemned for its graphic violence. Today, movie violence and computer-generated video game mayhem have become so routine that it can be hard to remember the explosive impact that films like The Wild Bunch and Bonnie and Clyde had in the late 1960s. Audiences were shocked. Until then, gunfights were largely bloodless, quick and easy, even glamorized. But in The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah was determined to show violence as it really was: brutal, ugly, horrifying. And show it he did.
Set in 1913 against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, The Wild Bunch focuses on a gang of aging outlaws raising hell along the Texas-Mexico border. They are a desperate bunch. They know their gunfighter days are numbered. On the run from bounty hunters, they agree to pull one last, big job for a bloodthirsty Mexican general who will pay them to go north and steal guns and ammo for him from the U.S. Army.
With a murderous gang of bad men as the heroes of this tale, it can be troubling to find yourself wanting them to come out on top. The bloody bank robbery that opens the film will certainly test your empathy for them.
It’s a tribute to Peckinpah’s artistry with character development and storytelling that we end up caring about the violent men in The Wild Bunch.
But it’s a tribute to Peckinpah’s artistry with character development and storytelling that we end up caring about the violent men in The Wild Bunch because—as bad as they are—they still cling to a code of honor that we admire, one that sets them apart from the other bad men that are closing in on them. In a way, the Bunch are like battered, chivalrous knights determined to stick together as their old world falls apart around them. It’s their code of honor that ultimately leads them to make a heroic last stand to protect one of their own against insurmountable odds. What follows is a true battle royale, an explosive, hurricane finale that you won’t soon forget. Over the years, many action directors have sought to copy, emulate, or pay tribute to the finale of The Wild Bunch, but Peckinpah’s achievement was first…and remains unsurpassed.
I give The Wild Bunch four out of four stars. It’s a stunning masterpiece.
