The Wild Bunch (1969)

John Chard

10.0

Feb 10, 2017

Brutal and elegiac masterpiece. Outlaws led by Pike Bishop on the Mexican/U.S. frontier face not only the passing of time, but bounty hunters (led by former partner of Pike, Deke Thornton) and the Mexican army as well. In 1969 Sam Peckinpah picked up the torch that Arthur Penn lit with 1967's "Bonnie & Clyde", and literally poured gasoline on it to impact on cinema to the point that the shock wave is still being felt today. The death of the "Motion Picture Production Code" in 1967 ushered in a new era for cinema goers, it was a time for brave and intelligent directors to step up to the p…

There are no ‘good guys’ in The Wild Bunch, only bad guys and worse guys. The titular bunch are thieves and killers, but at least they won’t rob a dead man – unlike the posse of bounty hunters, led by Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), sent by the railroad company to bring the bunch in dead or alive. Deke, himself a former bunch member, is considerably more evolved than the mercenaries railroad man Harrigan (Albert Dekker) has saddled him with (“chicken-stealing gutter trash,” Deke calls them). There is no love lost between Deke and bunch leader Pike Bishop (William Holden), but the former has on…

Filipe Manuel Neto

5.0

Oct 15, 2023

**A good Western, with some problems that prevent it from being excellent.** Personally, I think that Western is a genre of cinema focused on entertainment and action, and I think that is generally correct. I haven't seen many Western films that can be said to be great (although they exist). This film is good, it is beyond average, but it is not free from problems and imperfections. The plot is based on a gang that carries out its latest bank robbery. They know that, in the 20th century, they are part of a dying world and times are changed. Things go wrong: it was a trap set up by the au…