The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O’Brien, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The plot concerns an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico–United States border trying to adapt to the changing modern world of 1913. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any available means.[2]
The screenplay was co-written by Peckinpah, Walon Green, and Roy N. Sickner. The Wild Bunch was filmed in Technicolor and Panavision, in Mexico, notably at the Hacienda Ciénaga del Carmen, deep in the desert between Torreón and Saltillo, Coahuila, and on the Nazas River.
The Wild Bunch is noted for intricate, multi-angle, quick-cut editing using normal and slow motion images, a revolutionary cinema technique in 1969. The writing of Green, Peckinpah, and Sickner was nominated for a best screenplay Oscar, and the music by Jerry Fielding was nominated for Best Original Score. Additionally, Peckinpah was nominated for an Outstanding Directorial Achievement award by the Directors Guild of America, and cinematographer Lucien Ballard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography.
In 1999, the Library of Congress selected The Wild Bunch for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as ”culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant”.[3] The film was ranked 80th in the American Film Institute’s 100 best American films and the 69th most thrilling film.[4] In 2008, the AFI listed 10 best films in 10 genres and ranked The Wild Bunch as the sixth-best Western.[5][6]

Plot
In 1913 Texas, Pike Bishop, the leader of a gang of aging outlaws, seeks to retire after a final robbery of silver from a railroad payroll office. Corrupt railroad agent Pat Harrigan has hired a posse of bounty hunters led by Pike’s former partner Deke Thornton, who ambush and kill more than half of Bishop’s gang in a bloody shootout, which also kills many innocent bystanders as Pike uses a serendipitous temperance union parade to shield their getaway.
Pike rides off with the only survivors: his close friend Dutch Engstrom, brothers Lyle and Tector Gorch, the inexperienced Angel, and a fifth man blinded and mortally wounded by buckshot, who Pike mercy-kills. The loot from the robbery turns out to be worthless steel washers planted by Harrigan. Needing money, they head for Mexico accompanied by the cantankerous Freddie Sykes and cross the Rio Grande to the rural village where Angel was born. The village elder warns them about General Mapache, a vicious Huertista officer in the Mexican Federal Army, who has been stealing food and animals from local villages to support his campaign against the forces of Pancho Villa.
Pike’s gang ask the general for work at his headquarters in the town of Agua Verde. Angel spots his former lover Teresa in Mapache’s arms and shoots her dead, angering the general and nearly getting them killed, but Pike defuses the situation. Mapache offers gold to the gang to rob a U.S. Army train so Mapache can resupply his army’s dwindling stocks of ammunition and provide samples of American weapons to his German military adviser Commander Mohr.
Angel gives his share of the gold to Pike in return for sending one crate of rifles and ammunition to a band of peasant rebels opposed to Mapache. The holdup goes largely as planned until Thornton’s posse turns up on the train the gang has robbed and chases them to the Mexican border. The robbers blow up a trestle bridge spanning the Rio Grande as the posse tries to cross, dumping the entire posse into the river, but the exhausted posse continues their pursuit.

The director sets up the climactic gun battle sequences at ”Agua Verde” (the Hacienda Ciénaga del Carmen).
Pike, anticipating that Mapache might double-cross him, hides the goods and has his men sell them to Mapache in separate amounts. However, Mapache learns from Teresa’s mother that Angel stole some of the weapons and reveals this as Angel and Dutch deliver the last of the weapons. Angel desperately tries to escape, only to be captured and beaten. Mapache lets Dutch go after he states that Angel is a thief who deserves to be punished, and Dutch then tells Pike and the others what happened.
Sykes is wounded by Thornton’s posse while securing spare horses. Dutch criticizes Thornton for working with the railroad, but Pike says Thornton ”gave his word” to the railroad and must see it through. Dutch angrily declares, ”That ain’t what counts, it’s who you give it to.” Pike and the gang bury most of the gold and return to Agua Verde, where the townspeople and soldiers are drunkenly celebrating the weapons sale and Mapache is dragging Angel through town on a rope tied to the back of his car. Mapache refuses to sell Angel back to the gang, and after a period of reflection while visiting a brothel, Pike and the others arm themselves to rescue their friend by force.
Mapache initially agrees to release Angel, only to cut his throat at the last second. The gang instantly opens fire and guns down the general. While the nearby soldiers are frozen in shock, Pike calmly takes aim and kills Mohr. This begins a bloody gunfight that kills Pike, Dutch, the remaining gang members, Mohr’s aide, every member of Mapache’s staff, and most of the assembled troops.
Thornton arrives and finds Pike already dead. Thornton finds a loaded revolver on Pike’s belt and takes it as a sign that the days of men like him are over. Feeling outdated and tired, Thornton allows the remaining posse members to greedily strip Pike and his men of their possessions before taking them back to Texas for the bounty, while he stays behind. After some time, Sykes arrives with the elder from Angel’s village and a band of rebels, indicating that they caught up with the bounty hunters, avenged the gang’s deaths, and buried them properly. Sykes invites Thornton to join the coming revolution against the Mexican government. Thornton smiles and rides off with them.

1969

R

085393372828

American Cinema

Movie

60’s

2018-02-07 18:12:58

2.40:1

142

United States

2.40:1

2

1

Keep Case

~$15.16

2026-02-04

2018-02-07 18:12:58