Wild Bunch, The (1969)
The Wild Bunch (1969), directed by Sam Peckinpah.
First review
A sad brutal epic, it could not be improved.
You seldom see such a concentration of acting talent. Many fine performances. In particular, I will see anything with Robert Ryan, one of the great film noir actors.
When I first saw this, famous for its new level of violence, I thought of it as an anti-western, or as someone put it, the gravestone of westerns. Now I see the old mythic power is still there: honor among thieves (although it is a bit of a struggle). Separating the Men from the "gutter trash". Mexico as a land of suffering and savagery, always waiting for its deliverer. The great heroic gesture, ending in death.
On Blu-ray.
Second review
It's amazing how much the film has changed for me. Originally it was a controversial Tough Guy genre action film, a sort of tombstone for the Western. Tremendous cast, of course, many of them doing their finest work.
Now I see how masterfully crafted it is, and also how deeply felt and humane. That's right: with all the blood splatter and innocents massacred, they are at least real people, not film fantasy background targets without life or individuality. Peckinpah never flinches; he shows us things we maybe didn't want to see, but every action picture since has been a lesser, more juvenile work.
We reach a rarefied level in those moments just before the big final shootout. Pike gets laid one last time and the woman seems so young, a child herself (and yet she already has a baby). Being a man means despoiling innocence -- like the bird on a string with a broken wing in the next room -- and Pike hates himself for it. Time to turn about, go back and do the right thing, end it.
He enters Valhalla, weapon still in his hand. In the credits we see all the gang again, all laughing, reentering Angel's home village, their paradise.
Miscellaneous notes:
The shocking opening: the soldiers as bank robbers. I did not expect that the first time. Same with Pike's mercy killing of the wounded man.
The backstory is told in quick flashbacks. We learn how Pike abandoned Deke, and understand how the guilt gnaws at him.
They are a rough crew but not without loyalty, mostly from the leadership of Pike (William Holden) and Dutch (Ernest Borgnine).
The gang led by Pike and the "gutter trash" bounty hunters led by Deke (Robert Ryan) have curious parallels. The regular Army detachment is entirely different.
Hail the rest of the gang: Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson and Jaime Sánchez.
Hail the gutter trash: Strother Martin and L. Q. Jones, that fantastic pair.
The opening bank job is a fiasco but the later train robbery goes like clockwork.
As is often the case, Mexico is the adventure destination where life is more elemental.
Tough Guys have many skills, like operating locomotives. See my list of Tough Guy attributes in The Professionals (1966).
An inspired bit: the hero-worship by the kid when General Mapache's camp is attacked by the rebels. The General really appreciates it, because then he feels like something more than a bandit king. (Is that the kid who shoots Pike in the end?)
Mapache is played Emilio Fernández, last seen in another Peckinpah film: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). A director as well as an actor, as a young man he was said to be the model for the Oscar statue. (Did it need a model?)
Believe it or not, Borgnine and Ryan got their parts based on their work in The Dirty Dozen (1967).
Some comedy: during the train robbery, and the General's bit with the machine-gun.
Score by Jerry Fielding, photographed by Lucien Ballard, both essential Peckinpah collaborators.
Available on Blu-ray. The commentary track is Nick Redman with the usual three Peckinpah scholars ecstatic over this Homeric epic.
They emphasize the film's editing innovation and skill and efficiency in production, which the director learned from hard knocks in previous projects.
His career was in bad shape; this was the picture he need to prove himself.
Everyone on the track agrees he had the best director's credit in history. Pike: "If they move, kill 'em!". Freeze, switch to black and white, and: "Directed by Sam Peckinpah".
