THE WILD BUNCH
A film review by Will FitzHugh
Copyright 1996 Will FitzHugh
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Sam Peckinpah's classic western just got a limited theatrical run with some restored footage. I've seen it a couple of times on video, late at night and kind of woozy, so I decided to go see it on the big screen. I sat in the front row; for this epic I didn't want anything between me and the screen. I wanted to see Ernest Borgnine's nostrils like two railway tunnels.
Peckinpah portrays the west as a grimy, sweaty place populated by the stupid, the weak and the dishonest. Against this backdrop, William Holden's gang of outlaws seems princely. They're fucked up, too, but they at least retain some shreds of morality and purpose. The only new scenes in this release are some flashbacks that show Robert Ryan and Holden as friends and then show Ryan captured and sent to jail. Their relationship was never fully explained in the earlier version but I never really wondered too much; it wasn't really that complicated.
The first scene finds the gang, which includes Borgnine, Bo Hopkins (not for long, though) and Warren Oates, robbing a bank in a small border town in Texas. They are being set up by Ryan, who got his freedom from prison by agreeing to hunt down his former partners. Luckily for Holden, Ryan is surrounded by idiots, including the especially stinky, gun-kissing Strother Martin. Most of the outlaws escape with the loot when a Temperance Union parade catches most of the bullets meant for them. This first scene is classic Peckinpah. It's relentless, violent, and honest (when was the last time you saw an innocent bystander die in a Hollywood action flick?). The slow-motion shots of horses and people falling are disgusting and grand at the same time. Is he glorifying violence, lovingly caressing it like Martin and his 'aught-six', or is he trying to horrify us with the reality of it? Who knows? I was relieved when the scene ended but half an hour later I was yearning for the next eruption of violence.
The movie follows the gang into Mexico, where they find they've risked their lives for sacks full of steel washers. They drift further south, pausing for tequila and woman in the home village of their lone Mexican member, Angel. Then they plan a heist of an American Army shipment of rifles for a Mexican rebel general, whose tequila and woman they enjoy in some wacky, drunken scenes. Ryan anticipates the theft but they get away this time with the rifles and a machine gun in a breathless chase scene. They negotiate the trade for the rifles, but the general captures Angel when he discovers that one of his cases of rifles was given to the villagers.
The final scene has the four remaining gang members taking on all of the general's men in a suicidal attempt to rescue Angel. They may be criminals, but they'd rather die than leave one of their partners to be tortured to death by being dragged behind the general's ultra-modern roadster. This scene satisfied the thirst for blood I'd been suppressing for most of the movie. It seems to go on forever, a litany of gunshots, flopping bodies and death-grimaces. Peckinpah is proclaiming not only the death of the 'Wild Bunch' but of the western. A world of machine guns and fancy cars is no place for a gang of outlaws, anyway.
Will FitzHugh
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