Review of The Wild Bunch (1969) by Damien L — 11 Aug 2010

I guess the message here is that the worst people value friendship, too, or that they really have scruples of a sort, or that in a harsh environment the difference between law men and criminals can be hard to work out. If the first idea sounds interesting, Once Upon a Time in the West may be your kind of Western. If the second idea appeals, consider Heat. If you find the third idea intriguing, watch Unforgiven.

Those films delivered such messages compellingly, and with characters that weren't cartoonish but purposive in their evil--or in their good.

The early line "I don't care what you were *trying* to do; I only care what you *did,*" sticks out. The imagery strongly suggests director Peckinpah was trying to tell a grim parable about the dark side of humanity, but since characters' motives never sum up to anything coherent and their inclinations are so violently fickle, what he has done is make a consistently-morbid movie about inconsistently-violent people. It is gripping, it is memorable, it is significantly-flawed.

Uh, maybe I should clarify: This is about the 1969 western, not the 2010 animated film that's apparently about peaceful wildflowers under assault from big, bad genetically-modified crops. Or somesuch.