The Wild Bunch (1969)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 145m
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien
Synopsis:
1913: the eponymous gang is ambushed and heads into Mexico, pursued by a posse led by one of its former members. They plan one last job, in which they are successful but fall foul of the bandit Mapache.
Review:
A landmark western which shares many of its preoccupations with Butch Cassidy... but is as different from it as one could conceive otherwise. It introduced Peckinpah's trademark slow-motion blood-letting, a view of violence as somehow aesthetic which came back to haunt the action cinema of two decades later. Peckinpah claimed his intention was quite different - to show how brutally his heroes lived and died - and there is no doubt about his respect for these violent men, who have a code and stick to it in an increasingly amoral world. Holden gets his last great role.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 145m
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien
Synopsis:
1913: the eponymous gang is ambushed and heads into Mexico, pursued by a posse led by one of its former members. They plan one last job, in which they are successful but fall foul of the bandit Mapache.
Review:
A landmark western which shares many of its preoccupations with Butch Cassidy... but is as different from it as one could conceive otherwise. It introduced Peckinpah's trademark slow-motion blood-letting, a view of violence as somehow aesthetic which came back to haunt the action cinema of two decades later. Peckinpah claimed his intention was quite different - to show how brutally his heroes lived and died - and there is no doubt about his respect for these violent men, who have a code and stick to it in an increasingly amoral world. Holden gets his last great role.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 145m
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien
Synopsis:
1913: the eponymous gang is ambushed and heads into Mexico, pursued by a posse led by one of its former members. They plan one last job, in which they are successful but fall foul of the bandit Mapache.
Review:
A landmark western which shares many of its preoccupations with Butch Cassidy... but is as different from it as one could conceive otherwise. It introduced Peckinpah's trademark slow-motion blood-letting, a view of violence as somehow aesthetic which came back to haunt the action cinema of two decades later. Peckinpah claimed his intention was quite different - to show how brutally his heroes lived and died - and there is no doubt about his respect for these violent men, who have a code and stick to it in an increasingly amoral world. Holden gets his last great role.