And it's Peckinpah at his finest. "The Wild Bunch, An Album in Montage" is also very well made and kept my attention throughout its 33 minute running time, combining a generous helping of behind-the-scenes footage (shot in black-and-white with a handheld camera) with finalized scenes from the film. It's a road picture and a morality tale and another ode to the sunsetting of the western and to some of its top stars. Check box if your review contains spoilers. Like action movies, they were two-fisted tales of (stereotypically male) heroism. Filmed in Mexico with the cream of the Mexican industry’s action experts, it has several big directors (Emilio Fernandez, Chano Urueta, Alfonso Arau, Fernando Wagner) as actors. Mystery Escape Room: The Wild Bunch - See 2,018 traveler reviews, 73 candid photos, and great deals for Salt Lake City, UT, at Tripadvisor. A movie review by James Berardinelli Violence comes in many shapes, sizes, and forms. And it's Peckinpah at his finest. Children run after the car, laughing. His men shoot, screw, drink, and ride horses. Near the end of the film, Pike is shot by a little boy who gets his hands on a gun. The video versions of "The Wild Bunch," restored to its original running time of 144 minutes, include several scenes not widely seen since the movie had its world premiere in 1969. Treborus. We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be! Like them, he was an obsolete, violent, hard-drinking misfit with his own code, and did not fit easily into the new world of automobiles, and Hollywood studios. Film at 145 minutes is far over-length, and should be tightened extensively, particularly in first half. The train robbery is well-planned, but the bunch cannot hold onto their takings. The deaths in this film are neither sterile nor heroic. And at the end, after the bloodshed, when the Robert Ryan character sits for hours outside the gate of the compound, just thinking, there is the … The wild bunch is simply the best the … Lots of bystanders are killed in both sequences (one of the bunch picks a scrap from a woman's dress off of his boot), but there is also cheap sentimentality, as when Pike gives gold to a prostitute with a child, before walking out to die. The eyes of Pike (William Holden), leader of the bunch, briefly meet the eyes of one of the children. The Wild Bunch still retains its sorrowful, fatal power because of the complexity of Peckinpah's attitudes about violence. Now, when we watch Ryan, as Thornton, sitting outside the gate and thinking, we know what he is remembering. In an era when body-count films mirror the mounting body count offscreen, The Wild Bunch dissects death rather than glorifying it. Certainly that is a theme of "The Wild Bunch.". There is nothing else to do, not for a man with his background. It’s no accident that you feel a sense of loss for each killer of the Bunch: Peckinpah has made them seem heroically, mythically alive on the screen. I cannot pretend to know what he was thinking, but I look at the films and I surmise that they represent a continuing parable about a professional doing what he does well in the face of personal and professional agony. Holden and his fellow actors (Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson and the wonderful Robert Ryan) look lined and bone-tired. "We gotta start thinking beyond our guns," one of the bunch observes. They have trapped some scorpions and are watching them being tortured by ants. The Wild Bunch (1969) In the decades before Bullitt, before modern action movies grew into something like maturity, Westerns served a lot of the same functions. The Wild Bunch still retains its sorrowful, fatal power because of the complexity of Peckinpah's attitudes about violence. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts. Hundreds of men, women and horses are slaughtered. The first bank robbery nets only a bag of iron washers--"a dollar's worth of steel holes." When it comes to the action scenes though, the wild bunch is not a 1969 action film, it's eternal action film. The word "classic" tends to get overused now,but this film absolutely deserves that title. This is not the kind of film that would likely be made today, but it represents its set of sad, empty values with real poetry. An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them. I stood up and called it a masterpiece; I felt, then and now, that "The Wild Bunch" is one of the great defining moments of modern movies. With a wry smile he gets up to join them. Here's our final list of the 50 highest-scoring films released (in one... Music title data, credits, and images provided by, Movie title data, credits, and poster art provided by. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The message here is not subtle, but then Sam Peckinpah was not a subtle director, preferring bold images to small points. Please enter your birth date to watch this video: You are not allowed to view this material at this time. 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. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. *We're* finished! Report abuse. “We're not gonna get rid of anybody! The train robbery is well-planned, but the bunch cannot hold onto their takings. This information about The Wild Bunch shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Reviews of The Wild Soccer Bunch 3. And at the end, after the bloodshed, when the Robert Ryan character sits for hours outside the gate of the compound, just thinking, there is the payoff: A new gang is getting together, to see what jobs might be left to do. The Wild Bunch still retains its sorrowful, fatal power because of the complexity of Peckinpah's attitudes about violence. Read full review In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. “ The Wild Bunch ”–not to be associated with Butch Cassidy and his Wyoming outlaw gang–is the type of action-western that meets with favorable b.o. Blood flows in an unending stream. An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them. The Wild Bunch Reviews Click here if this is your business. Notable Video Game Releases: New and Upcoming, From The Godfather to Heat, the stamp of The Wild Bunch is self-evident. 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. It’s a traumatic poem of violence, with imagery as ambivalent as Goya’s. It is that the mantle of violence is passing from the old professionals like Pike and his bunch, who operate according to a code, into the hands of a new generation that learns to kill more impersonally, as a game, or with machines. It is all there: Why Pike limps, what passed between Pike and Thornton in the old days, why Pike seems tortured by his thoughts and memories. With William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien. It makes all the difference in the world. Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) was a Marine in World War II, apprenticed in Hollywood under the action director Don Siegel, and did more than anyone else to bring the traditional Western into the gloom of a modern, ironic age. It was party time, and not the right venue for what became one of the most controversial films of its time--praised and condemned with equal vehemence, like "Pulp Fiction." Rivetingly realistic, edited in a gripping and exciting style unseen up to that time, and marvelously scripted. The undercurrent of the action in "The Wild Bunch" is the sheer meaninglessness of it all. They have been making a living by crime for many years, and although Ryan is now hired by the law, it is only under threat that he will return to jail if he doesn't capture the bunch. They agree to … The eyes of Pike (, Visions of Friendship: Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin on The Climb, The Lynchian Aspirations of Losing Alice Underwhelm Rather Than Intrigue, CW Reboots Walker but Forgets to Give Him a Personality, Something as Extraordinary as Birth Itself: Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber on Pieces of a Woman. The two great violent set-pieces in the movie involve a lot of civilians. After a reporter from the Reader's Digest got up to ask "Why was this film ever made?" © 2021 METACRITIC, A RED VENTURES COMPANY. 11 Wild Bunch reviews. 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 movie was photographed by Lucien Ballard, in dusty reds and golds and browns and shadows. The movie is, first of all, about old and worn men. I suppose "The Wild Bunch" is the most violent movie ever made. Peckinpah’s script, direction and cutting (a marvelous, adventurous job by Louis … It was cut, not because of violence (only quiet scenes were removed), but because it was too long to be shown three times in an evening. And what is that code? “The Wild Bunch is about men who don’t relate to women very well,” Stratton says. “Whatever kind of affection they have, they can feel really only for each other. 3 people found this helpful. Movies: Wild Bunch, The; A band of outlaws find themselves hiding away in Mexico under the influence of a megolomaniac Mexican general. Rated the #1 best film of 1969, and #206 in the greatest all-time movies (according to RYM users). Later in the film, a member of the bunch named Angel is captured by Mexican rebels, and dragged around the town square behind one of the first automobiles anyone there has seen. 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. Wild Bunch, The; The Wild Bunch Review. All of us!”. The Wild Bunch was made soon after the release of the groundbreaking, violent Bonnie and Clyde, and at a time when news footage of the Vietnam War's carnage was broadcast into American living rooms every night. Verified Purchase. WRITE A REVIEW ★★★★★ 5 / 5. The movie takes place in 1913, on the eve of World War I. Read reviews and ratings of The Wild Bunch from our experts, and see what our community says, too! Wild Bunch, a collection of cowboy-outlaws who flourished in the 1880s and ’90s in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and surrounding states and territories. It's a bullet festival and a love letter to the genre and a big middle finger to the Hollywood rule book. Genres: Revisionist Western, New Hollywood. It's not very pleasant. The editing, by Lou Lombardo, uses slow motion to draw the violent scenes out into meditations on themselves. Fairly entertaining and well made western with good acting and writing. The wild bunch is maybe of the edgiest westerns ever made. Most of them fill in details from the earlier life of Pike, including his guilt over betraying Thornton (Robert Ryan), who was once a member of the bunch but is now leading the posse of bounty hunters on their trail. It says that you stand by your friends and against the world, that you wrest a criminal living from the banks, the railroads and the other places where the money is, and that while you don't shoot at civilians unnecessarily, it is best if they don't get in the way. 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. I met him twice, once on the set of "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973), once in a hotel room when he was touring to publicize "Alfredo Garcia," which then and now was not seen as the great film it is. Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In an early scene of "The Wild Bunch," the bunch rides into town past a crowd of children who are gathered with excitement around their game. And another, looking at the newfangled auto, says, "they're gonna use them in the war, they say." Quite good. But their focus was different. He was clearly drunk (on the set in Mexico, he sat on a chair in the sun, shielded by an umbrellas, hat, dark glasses, relaying instructions to his assistant director). Without these scenes, the movie seems more empty and existential, as if Pike and his men seek death after reaching the end of the trail. The hard action, bracing wit and mournful grace of Peckinpah’s cowboy classic shames every new movie around. 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. He was an iconoclast, warred with the studios, was often drunk, fought even with his actors, but achieved in "The Wild Bunch" and "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" (1974) a fusion of the Western myth and the existential hero. The Wild Bunch. 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