Review of The Wild Bunch (1969) by Adam R — 03 Jan 2017

"The Wild Bunch" is the best Western of all time, whether we're talking about Golden Age of Hollywood examples of the genre, the revisionism of late John Ford and Sam Peckinpah (this film's visionary director and co-writer) and others, the feverish springboard filmmakers from the '70s onward employed to express and explore vast expanses of strange ideas or the more traditional approach of contemporary efforts.

Cataloging both the high-riding thrill of the Old West and its sad decline with equal measures of pathos, rousing adventure, humor and gritty violence, Peckinpah captured the entirety of the region's role in defining not just the United States but North America as a whole; aficionados of the era would be proud. Though "Bunch" isn't set in the classic late-19th century -- taking place world World War I instead -- and interpretations of its allegorical "meaning" are numerous (often seen as a comment on the Vietnam conflict, but what enduring movie at the time wasn't seen as such?), it's hard to think of a way the auteur and his peerless cast could have improved upon the story of times gone by better than they did.

Pike Bishop (William Holden) is a legendary outlaw running out of time. Businessmen are becoming savvy to the way Pike and his band operate, making looting less lucrative. Furthermore, an old comrade, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), has been set free from prison to put an end to Pike and the bunch's bloody swath along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Both men find themselves weary of the company they keep. Apart from veterans Dutch (Ernest Borgnine, in yet another invaluable supporting performance); Tector (Ben Johnson) and Lyle (Warren Oates) Gorch; and Freddie Sykes (Edmond O'Brien, fulfilling the Walter Brennan role of the grizzled, wizened old coot) Pike knows his days of ill-gotten fortune by less-than-savory means are coming to an end. Thornton, meanwhile, finds himself in the company of headstrong, greedy dilettantes ill-equipped to get the piece of the action they're lusting for in the posse assigned to take down Pike and his men.

The bunch's grim journey to oblivion takes them south of the border, where they ally with sadistic, corrupt Federale warlord Gen. Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) in his cruel war against guerrilla natives. Thus the Vietnam connection comes in, but Peckinpah seems more interested in the era the movie is set than contemporary political matters (though the director commented to the contrary several times).

Spoiler alert: All members of the bunch die in a gruesome yet bravura finale which finally seems to find erstwhile bad men reasserting the dubious code of honor established before their world was turned upside-down by more streamlined operations' -- like Mapache's -- larger, cooler, less discerning brand of victimization. The ending is both glorious and sad: Though Pike and his company wreaked havoc, often against good people, their acts of evil were defined by self-determinism and (ill-fulfilled) necessity, rather than El General's brand of totalitarian conquest. Through the blood, bullets and guts, Peckinpah seems to comment that men like Pike and Thornton represent a peculiar ideal both among men of the Old West and modern society alike: It's better to deal with self-interested rebels than pretenders striving for respectability and legitimacy over the corpses of those they've bested.

And, from the evocative still-frame photography in the opening credits to the rich, nuanced characterization of even minor characters, Peckinpah advances this thesis compellingly from start to finish. The filmmaker spent the majority of his career constructing movies that serve as elegies for the bygone outlaw era; "The Wild Bunch" represents the apotheosis of that predilection.