Other Titles • The Wild Bunch - Sie kannten kein Gesetz (1969) • Il Mucchio selvaggio (1969)
Synopses for The Wild Bunch (1969)
1.
Nine men who came too late and stayed too long… By any standard, director Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch, a powerful tale of hang-dog desperados bound by a code of honor, rates as one of the all-time greatest Westerns, perhaps one of the greatest of all films.
(19 votes)
2.
By any standard, director Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch, a powerful tale of hangdog desperados bound by a code of honor, rates as one of the all-time greatest Westerns. In 1994 it was restored to a complete, pristine condition unseen since its July 1969 theatrical debut - and this digitally remastered anamorphic transfer showcases it to renewed blood-and-thunder effect.
(19 votes)
3.
As a counterpoint to the heroic horde of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, the aging gunmen of Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece break the very laws of honor which bind them in this bloody and meditative tale of the American West--widely considered to be the self-conscious nail in the coffin of the genre. William Holden, Robert Ryan, and Ernest Borgnine star as the leaders of a grizzled crew of Texan bandits who ride to Mexico, where, one by one, they are unceremoniously slaughtered by a Mexican revolutionary.
The western, a genre steeped in legend and the concept of loyalty, was a dying breed when Sam Peckinpah unleashed this amoral and violent opus. Along with BONNIE AND CLYDE, it ushered in a new breed of Hollywood film, depicting a harsh reality where lines between right and wrong became blurred. Peckinpah brilliantly used aging Western stars such as Ryan and Holden to convey this passing of the cinematic torch. The film brought issues of violence and morality in movies to the forefront of American film criticism. Instead of appreciating the film as a critique of brutal violence, many critics responded by rejecting what they saw as a superfluous spectacle of dead bodies.
(18 votes)
4.
One of the best action movies ever made, in a cleaned-up print restoring crucial parts of the story. No cavalry ever rode in with more epochal impact than the Wild Bunch in the legendary opening scene. Their steel-eyed leader, Pike (William Holden), and his robbers in stolen army uniforms help an old lady across the street, and then spark a massacre led by Pike's old crony Thornton (Robert Ryan), sprung from jail to hunt down his old gang. In just a few minutes, Sam Peckinpah sets the scene--a dusty Texas town in 1913--sketches a dozen vividly individualized characters, and choreographs one of the most realistic, influential, brilliantly photographed shootouts under the pitiless sun. The cast is superb (even Ernest Borgnine!), the dialog crackling, the bitterly ambiguous moral of the story hard-earned. It's the deeper, dark flip side to 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Consider buying the letterbox Wild Bunch, the review collection Doing It Right, and the Peckinpah bio "If They Move... Kill 'Em!"--Tim Appelo
(16 votes)
5.
Here's how director Sam Peckinpah described his motivation behind The Wild Bunch at the time of the film's 1969 release: "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. The Wild Bunch is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." All of these statements are true, but they don't begin to cover the impact that Peckinpah's film had on the evolution of American movies. Now the film is most widely recognized as a milestone event in the escalation of screen violence, but that's a label of limited perspective. Of course, Peckinpah's bloody climactic gunfight became a masterfully directed, photographed, and edited ballet of graphic violence that transcended the conventional Western and moved into a slow-motion realm of pure cinematic intensity. But the film--surely one of the greatest Westerns ever made--is also a richly thematic tale of, as Peckinpah said, "bad men in changing times." The year is 1913 and the fading band of thieves known as the Wild Bunch (led by William Holden as Pike) decide to pull one last job before retirement. But an ambush foils their plans, and Peckinpah's film becomes an epic yet intimate tale of betrayed loyalties, tenacious rivalry, and the bunch's dogged determination to maintain their fading code of honor among thieves. The 144-minute director's cut enhances the theme of male bonding that recurs in many of Peckinpah's films, restoring deleted scenes to deepen the viewer's understanding of the friendship turned rivalry between Pike and his former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who now leads a posse in pursuit of the bunch, a dimension that adds resonance to an already classic American film. The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece that should not be defined strictly in terms of its violence, but as a story of mythic proportion, brimming with rich characters and dialogue and the bittersweet irony of outlaw traditions on the wane. --Jeff Shannon
(17 votes)
6.
By any standards, director Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch, a powerful tale of hang-dog desperados bound by a code of honor, rates as one of the all-time greatest Westerns, perhaps one of the greatest of all films.
This Original Director's Cut restores it to a complete pristine condition unseen since its July 1969 theatrical debut. The image is letterboxed, the color renewed, the stereo soundtrack remixed and reintegrated – all to blood-and-thunder effect. Watch William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and more great stars saddle up for the roles of a lifetime.
This DVD also features (on Side B) the home video debut of The Wild Bunch: an Album in Montage, the Academy Award – nominated 1966 documentary by Paul Seydor and Nick Redman. It includes long-unseen footage of the on-set shooting, and reminiscences by principals connected with the film.
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