#79 - The Wild Bunch

(I wrote about this movie when I watched it a couple of weeks ago, but apparently I erased the post. So here is another post, hopefully similar to my original.)

Now this is a man's movie. Condemned as being full of deplorable violence and contemptible language when it was first released in 1969, this movie is full of the type of character who is the ultimate "man's man." The only women present are the archetypal "professional" gals that belong in the upstairs of local saloons.

When I was younger, I would watch Westerns with my grandfather. He would always tell me that he much preferred "clean Westerns" over "dirty Westerns." To put it succinctly, this is not my grandfather's Western movie.

From the opening scene, it is clear that this is going to be a bloodbath. The first five minutes were some of the best-edited, most urgently acted moments I've seen in a while.

Themes of change are omnipresent in the movie: just as the movie itself is a shocking change from the "clean Westerns" everyone knows and loves, the characters in the movie are going through a change of cowboy values. Set in the early 1900s Prohibition Era Texas-Mexico border, the movie depicts a group of guys who are standing strong with their tough-man values as the world around them softens up.

The Wild Bunch go on several adventures, stealing from some people to give to others, in the typical Western fashion. What makes this movie so different is the layers given to all of the important characters -- William Holden as the aging Pike Bishop is being hunted by his former partner, a bounty hunter Deke Thornton. After all of the criminal activities, after all of the government's plans have gone awry, the movie ends in one of the bloodiest, goriest shoot-outs in movie history. Very few people make it out of the Mexican village alive, but the ones who do are obviously forever changed.

Overall, the movie was a great escape from the usual AFI grind, which consists mostly of cerebral dramas that play more like a long conversation than an actually entertaining movie. The shoot-'em-up action was different and beautifully shot, and made for an entertaining experience throughout.