The passage of time can have an interesting effect on movies. Some films become more appreciated as time goes on. Some films that are initially hailed, suffer as they are reevaluated over time. The Wild Bunch is an unusual case. The things that garnered it such praise when it was first released no longer have much salience, but the fading of that hype and sensation hasn't hurt the movie at all. The passage of time has revealed it to be a very good story on a basic level.
The Wild Bunch is about a gang of outlaws that has managed to fight and rob and kill all the way past the end of the Wild West era. They're still riding horses and robbing railroad company offices as automobiles and planes begin to spread across the world, as semi-automatic pistols and machine guns take the place of revolvers and rifles, as War threatens in Europe and Pancho Villa leads his rebels in Mexico. The gang is lead by Pike (William Holden), a smart man who can feel age sapping away the strength that used to carry him through life. Pike and some of the rest of his gang are looking for one more big score, so they can retire to a life of at least mediocre leisure . That big score isn't their latest robbery of a railroad office, though. That's an ambush that leaves several of the gang dead and the rest with nothing to show for their efforts. In addition, the railroad has freed Pike's former partner, Thornton (Robert Ryan), from prison. The railroad puts Thornton in charge of a posse of human scum and sends them after Pike's gang. Pike leads his gang into Mexico, where they encounter a general who gives them a chance for that one more big score. The gang is to steal weapons for the general from a U.S. Army train in exchange for 10,000 dollars in gold. But even though Thornton is able to anticipate or figure out everything Pike and his gang are planning, it's not the robbery that causes them any trouble. When one of the gang members, Angel (Jaime Sanchez), is taken prisoner by the general for Angel's work helping Mexican rebels, Pike and his men have to make a decision. They can take the money, abandon their compatriot and live. Or they can decide that there are some things they can't live with anymore.
When the Wild Bunch first hit theaters, what caused a commotion was the level of graphic violence in the picture. When people get shot in this Western, they spurt blood and slow motion captures their death spasms. And they don't just get shot once, it might take two or three or six bullets to bring them down. And the final battle where dozens and dozens are killed by machine guns and grenades was pretty far beyond anything expected in the Western genre. Of course, all of that stuff is hardly shocking or that noteworthy by today's movie violence standards. Peckinpah's skill at portraying violence as chaos and frenzy is still striking. There's none of the careful and obvious choreography in his killings that you find so often in modern films. But while Peckinpah's bloodbaths were almost unprecedented in their day, it's all rather tame to anyone who's seen everything from Jaws to The Terminator to Saving Private Ryan.
While its "cutting edge" has dulled, The Wild Bunch remains a really good movie. Holden gives a strong performance as a man who knows he's outlived his time, but still hopes for an ending he won't regret. Ernest Borgnine and Edmond O'Brien are also quite good as Pike's closest friends, O'Brien as the weak, old man that Holden could degenerate into and Borgnine as the contemporary who doesn't really understand the outlaw days are over. Robert Ryan is equally fine as a badman who's been caught and won't let himself go back to prison, even though he's disgusted and outraged at the behavior and attitudes of his "law abiding" masters and fellow bounty hunters.
The plot is also imaginative, fast moving and realistic, for the most part. The action scenes are compelling and the story doesn't bog down in between, but it still takes time to let these characters show you who they are so the movie doesn't have to stop and tell you.
Before I watched it, I remember hearing about The Wild Bunch as one of those Westerns that deconstructed the genre. But I don't think that's fundamentally true. Yes, the movie is much more realistic about the violence, sex, poverty, hardship and depravity of the Wild West. Yet in the end it embraces the conventions of the Western instead of exploding them. The Western was never really about its unrealistic clichés of shooting guns out of people's hand or singing cowboys and what not. They were stories defined and bounded by concepts of honor and right and wrong. They were stories of men choosing to do what they thought was right instead of what was easy. They were characters and adventures that may not have been true to their time period, but they were true to the way we wish the world would be.
The Wild Bunch is about a gang of outlaws that has managed to fight and rob and kill all the way past the end of the Wild West era. They're still riding horses and robbing railroad company offices as automobiles and planes begin to spread across the world, as semi-automatic pistols and machine guns take the place of revolvers and rifles, as War threatens in Europe and Pancho Villa leads his rebels in Mexico. The gang is lead by Pike (William Holden), a smart man who can feel age sapping away the strength that used to carry him through life. Pike and some of the rest of his gang are looking for one more big score, so they can retire to a life of at least mediocre leisure . That big score isn't their latest robbery of a railroad office, though. That's an ambush that leaves several of the gang dead and the rest with nothing to show for their efforts. In addition, the railroad has freed Pike's former partner, Thornton (Robert Ryan), from prison. The railroad puts Thornton in charge of a posse of human scum and sends them after Pike's gang. Pike leads his gang into Mexico, where they encounter a general who gives them a chance for that one more big score. The gang is to steal weapons for the general from a U.S. Army train in exchange for 10,000 dollars in gold. But even though Thornton is able to anticipate or figure out everything Pike and his gang are planning, it's not the robbery that causes them any trouble. When one of the gang members, Angel (Jaime Sanchez), is taken prisoner by the general for Angel's work helping Mexican rebels, Pike and his men have to make a decision. They can take the money, abandon their compatriot and live. Or they can decide that there are some things they can't live with anymore.
When the Wild Bunch first hit theaters, what caused a commotion was the level of graphic violence in the picture. When people get shot in this Western, they spurt blood and slow motion captures their death spasms. And they don't just get shot once, it might take two or three or six bullets to bring them down. And the final battle where dozens and dozens are killed by machine guns and grenades was pretty far beyond anything expected in the Western genre. Of course, all of that stuff is hardly shocking or that noteworthy by today's movie violence standards. Peckinpah's skill at portraying violence as chaos and frenzy is still striking. There's none of the careful and obvious choreography in his killings that you find so often in modern films. But while Peckinpah's bloodbaths were almost unprecedented in their day, it's all rather tame to anyone who's seen everything from Jaws to The Terminator to Saving Private Ryan.
While its "cutting edge" has dulled, The Wild Bunch remains a really good movie. Holden gives a strong performance as a man who knows he's outlived his time, but still hopes for an ending he won't regret. Ernest Borgnine and Edmond O'Brien are also quite good as Pike's closest friends, O'Brien as the weak, old man that Holden could degenerate into and Borgnine as the contemporary who doesn't really understand the outlaw days are over. Robert Ryan is equally fine as a badman who's been caught and won't let himself go back to prison, even though he's disgusted and outraged at the behavior and attitudes of his "law abiding" masters and fellow bounty hunters.
The plot is also imaginative, fast moving and realistic, for the most part. The action scenes are compelling and the story doesn't bog down in between, but it still takes time to let these characters show you who they are so the movie doesn't have to stop and tell you.
Before I watched it, I remember hearing about The Wild Bunch as one of those Westerns that deconstructed the genre. But I don't think that's fundamentally true. Yes, the movie is much more realistic about the violence, sex, poverty, hardship and depravity of the Wild West. Yet in the end it embraces the conventions of the Western instead of exploding them. The Western was never really about its unrealistic clichés of shooting guns out of people's hand or singing cowboys and what not. They were stories defined and bounded by concepts of honor and right and wrong. They were stories of men choosing to do what they thought was right instead of what was easy. They were characters and adventures that may not have been true to their time period, but they were true to the way we wish the world would be.