The western was very much a staple diet of American cinema . It's a genre that wasn't really popular with critics but was popular with the general public both sides of the Atlantic probably to do with the romantic ideals and values of the good guy always defeating the bad guy in a straight fight . Along comes Sam Peckinpah and turns the genre on its head

It's important to realise what was happening when THE WILD BUNCH was being produced . The Hollywood studio system had given way to " The New Hollywood " where the director was given sole creative control while The Hays Code strictly forbidding on screen sex and violence had given way to a certification system widening moral ambiguity and explicit adult themes . Director Sam Peckinpah stampedes through these new found artistic freedoms

The film gets off to a shocking opening and there's very much an influence of Eisenstein at play . As there's little internal logic to a woman remonstrating with Czarist troops in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN there's equally little logic to the temperance society members continually walking in to the crossfire between the outlaws and the bounty hunters in a gun battle lasting four minutes . The emotional impact of the scene takes preference over logic and even today this remains a potent scene

Much of this is down to the editing . No other colour film before it contained so much rapid cross cutting editing . Many scenes - most notably the bloody shoot out ending contain a shot length of less than one second . American film theorist David Bordwell calculated at the end of the century the average shot length was three to six seconds while it was becoming slightly longer , so for a film released in 1969 this type of fast paced editing style is absolutely phenomenal

Peckinpah was a master of dubious morality and THE WILD BUNCH contains the theme of this amorality . The outlaws are desperate men but they have their own moral codes . When one of the outlaws wants to dispatch old timer Sykes anti-hero Pike Bishop self righteously dictates when you ride with a man it's for keeps , and the outlaws find a mortal redemption when they sacrifice their lives as an act of revenge for the execution of Angel

The legacy of THE WILD BUNCH is that it effective destroyed the traditional western . Afterwards there were only revisionary westerns such as LITTLE BIG MAN and DANCES WITH WOLVES and anti westerns such as McCABE AND MRS MILLER and THE CULPEPPER CATTLE CO being produced but never again would the western be a long term prolific production . That's what you call radical

This is a very long Western about a group of criminals during the years leading up to America's entry into WWI. These criminals, led by William Holden, were selfish and greedy and in an effort to catch them, bodies and blood were shed on an unheard of scale in this Sam Peckinpah directed film. Technically speaking, aside from some very over-indulgent scenes (I hated all the slow-motion stuff and the scorpion scene--the imagery was far from subtle),this is a very well-made film. The acting is excellent, the script very familiar (much like the earlier film, THE PROFESSIONALS) but new enough to make it stand out from other Westerns and it was exciting.

So, why, with so much to recommend it and a very high score on IMDb do I wish to never watch more Westerns like it?! Well, the film was so freaking Nihilistic and violent. In this film, there were no heroes--none. The railroad authorities (in the form of Albert Dekker) were not the good guys--they could have cared less about all the innocent civilians who were slaughtered. As for Robert Ryan and his band of bounty hunters....well, they were scum and seemed much like evil versions of "Larry, Darryl and Darryl" from the Newhart Show. The Wild Bunch itself, all murderers who supposedly redeem themselves in the end, but this end seemed more like a pointless job of butchery and not an act of justice. The American Army,...they were just there to look stupid and be killed. And, perhaps, Pancho Villa's troops were the closest thing to heroes in the film, though you never really learned about their cause or that the real-life Villa was a cut-throat and vicious killer. Never before this movie had there been a film so jam-packed full of worthless and vile people. Now in a way, doing such a film isn't a bad idea--after all, the utter futility of it all is a big message you are left with when the film is complete. But Peckinpah's twisted vision of the West also led to other more modern films where it seems that entertainment is watching others die and heroes, as we've come to know them, are non-existent. As for me, in the long run, I could have lived without this well-made but unfortunately oft-copied film. Give me some heroes instead.

I am not a huge fan of westerns, but there have been a lot that I have liked. The Wild Bunch is certainly one of my favourites of the genre. While quite elegiac, Sam Peckinpah is also practically re-inventing a genre. The Wild Bunch is violent, gritty and bloody, but that is in no way a bad thing, quite the contrary.

The Wild Bunch has the exquisite images usually found in Peckinpah's movies- the scenery is just gorgeous and the cinematography is just amazing. Fielding's score is very good and quite poignant to say the least. I also loved how The Wild Bunch was paced, it may be slow but to add to the elegiac quality of the movie the slow pacing was necessary I feel.

Also apparent in The Wild Bunch are some great script-writing, a highly compelling story, great characters and some surrealistically choreographed gunfights. Peckinpah's direction is right on the money, and the acting is superb. William Holden gives one of his best performances, and I was equally blown away by Ernest Borgnine.

All in all, a superb film and one of the best of the western genre. 10/10 Bethany Cox