Review of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) by Ken T — 09 Feb 2010

I came to this movie with little prior experience with Peckinpah's work. While famous for The Wild Bunch, a film concerned primarily with the concepts of loyalty and the ambiguity of morality, Peckinpah reaches even further in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and dispenses with the idea morality entirely.

Instead, he presents the American West as a desolate dream-like state where actions have no motive and situations are the result of insurmountable and ever present chaos. The narrative is somewhat inconsequential to Peckinpah's vision here, as scenes bleed into one another without rhyme or reason, or regard for time and space.

The film also features Bob Dylan in an astonishing performance that laid the blueprint for a myriad of film characters to follow. Dylan also contributed as the composer and performer of the film's score.

Coburn and Kristofferson are also brilliant as the title characters, dispensing with the traditional good-guy/bad-guy concept of Westerns and, instead, both play protagonists who have no true allegiances to anything.