Review of The Wild Bunch (1969) by Shane S — 24 Jul 2010

If you had to distill the purest form of awesome ever conceived, it'll look something quite like this. Yeah, that's a stupid way of praising Sam Peckinpah's equally disturbing and satirical take on the classic Western, but this film - not those high-octane Jerry Bruckheimer/Don Simpson productions from the '80s - is the birth of the balls-to-the-wall action film. This is not your typical adventure film - they aren't trying to save princesses or get glory. They're just trying to survive in this newfangled world of 1913, handing over US Army weapons to Mexicans and Germans and letting some of their crew die so they can get a win.

The acting is amazing, especially from Jamie Sanchez, Ernest Borgnine, and William Holden. Their characters have a unique charm to them that makes you enthralled in the story - unlike most Westerns, these guys actually have a motivation for doing what they do. The Man with No Name has nothing. Nor does Shane. But Pike and the bunch - they need to survive in this era of cars and machine guns.

As for the violence - my God, is it over the top like crazy! Not only do we get a shootout while the temperance union parade marches through town, we also get bridges blowing up and an entire town wiped out due to a machine gun. This is mainly why this film is hard R (and so awesome that it moved up to NC-17 back in 1993 before they decided to keep it the way it is) - yes, there's language, but not much, and nudity, but not extreme. It's the violence that puts you in and the violence that leaves you hungry for a second viewing. So, yeah. Watch this movie now.