The Wild Bunch - Honor Among Thieves

Oct

8

The Wild Bunch - Honor Among Thieves

≡ Category: Action, Drama, Essential, Mainstream, Movie Reviews By Country, Suspense, United States, Western |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Action/ Drama/ Suspense/ Western/ Mainstream
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Year: 1969

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE

One of the key films of the 1960s, The Wild Bunch has also been hugely influential for action movie directors ever since.

The story is fairly simple. In the waning days of the Wild West (the story takes place in 1913), a group of outlaws headed by Pike Bishop (William Holden, in one of his greatest roles) is on the run from agents of the railroad. Making matters worse is that one of Pike’s old friends, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) has been coopted by the railroad into hunting down Pike.

Pike Bishop is growing old and he knows it. He needs one last big score before he can back off and retire.

Our first view of Pike is as a cold-blooded killer, but as the movie continues, we start to see that he has a code of honor, which he himself has broken, and we feel his shame. Under stress, the Wild Bunch threaten to unravel and go their separate ways, but they’re held together by Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine, in the performance of his career), who supports Pike.

The relationship between Pike and Dutch is fascinating. I had the feeling that Pike appreciates Dutch’s support, but doesn’t quite understand it. During the final gunfight in the picture, Dutch has an impassioned outburst that tells you everything you need to know about his feelings for Pike.

And that’s only one relationship. The relationships between all of these men are handled beautifully, without compromising the pacing of the film. Peckinpah’s lucky to get career-best performances from Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Albert Dekker, and Emilio Fernández, although when you have this many great performances in a film, luck doesn’t have a lot to do with it. It’s more of a tribute to Peckinpah’s ability to direct actors, and the casting of course.

Probably the most brilliant aspect of The Wild Bunch is the way the two epic gunbattles in the film are foreshadowed and executed.

The film begins with an extraordinarily powerful image, which will inform the rest of the movie. The Wild Bunch ride by on the horses, watching children at play. What the Bunch don’t see is that the children are torturing several scorpions by placing them on top of an ant hill. After they’ve had their fun, the kids pile straw on the ants and burn both the scorpions and the ants. That image is referenced a number of times.

The first gun battle is my personal favorite. Peckinpah weaves together three separate narrative strands through a combination of extraordinary editing, a profusion of camera angles and lenses, and alternating between slow and regular speeds. It’s a miniature masterpiece of storytelling, and one of the most exciting sequences in all of film. Peckinpah slowly builds the tension in the sequence, tightening the screws until you want to scream, and then he releases it an orgiastic and yet exquisitely controlled manner.

I should also mention at this point that the score by Jerry Fielding is terrific, mightily assisting Peckinpah in achieving the emotional effects he’s aiming for. Likewise, the cinematography by the great Lucien Ballard is naturalistic and yet grand.

Really, The Wild Bunch is close to being a perfect film. The only flaw, as far as I can see, is the device of laughter as a unifying motif for the Wild Bunch. It was rather stagy and mannered then, and has only gotten more so in the intervening forty years.

But as far as I’m concerned, if you haven’t seen The Wild Bunch, you can’t claim to be cinematically literate, any more than if you haven’t seen Citizen Kane or Casablanca or The Godfather. Whatever you do, make sure you see the Director’s Cut or you’ll miss out on some of the most powerful moments.