The Wild Bunch probably has one of the best opening scenes in American cinema. We see a group of army men riding into town, a symbol of order in the once-chaotic American West, but at the same time there is a sense of foreboding, a sense confirmed by the nearby children playing with a pit of ants and scorpions. As it turns out, the soldiers are actually bank robbers in disguise, and the scruffy figures sitting on rooftops are what passes for the forces of law. But there are no heroes here, just violent animals scrambling for any advantage or momentary pleasure.
And so the robbery ends in a violent shootout in which seemingly half the town is caught in the crossfire. This shootout is shocking both for the level of violence which it openly displays in a genre accustomed to bloodless shootouts in which the bad guy fell down clutching his chest and for the people to whom the violence was directed. Women and children are shot down in the street, with neither side displaying an ounce of compassion. There is none of the order of pistols at high noon, simply a wild hail of bullets that quickly becomes an end in itself.
It's perhaps unrealistic to expect any film to maintain this level of brilliance and shock over two and a half hours (although the best can manage it). Shortly after the shootout, the titular wild bunch go down to Mexico, and the movie turns into something like Vera Cruz without as much charm. There are still some great sequences, and Peckinpah maintains a brilliant visual sensibility throughout, drawing on Sergio Leone's spaghetti Western style.
At its root, The Wild Bunch is a critique of the Western hero and the idea of redemptive violence that drives both genre film and American foreign policy. Here violence always escapes the intent of its perpetrators, and becomes an entity in itself, a kind of free-floating virus that is both horrible and erotic. The film ultimately relents on the amorality of its heroes -- by the end we have the American outlaws avenging the good Mexican by shooting down the bad Mexican. It still turns into chaotic carnage, but this carnage is much easier to contain within the Western's moral tropes. Like many directors of his generation, Peckinpah sets out to critique violent masculinity, but can never really escape its orbit, and the aestheticized violence in the film seduces as much as it repulses.
This is not a movie that everyone will like, but it's an important part of film history, and unlike many important parts of film history it still holds some of its power to surprise and shock today. At the very least, everybody should give it a try.
And so the robbery ends in a violent shootout in which seemingly half the town is caught in the crossfire. This shootout is shocking both for the level of violence which it openly displays in a genre accustomed to bloodless shootouts in which the bad guy fell down clutching his chest and for the people to whom the violence was directed. Women and children are shot down in the street, with neither side displaying an ounce of compassion. There is none of the order of pistols at high noon, simply a wild hail of bullets that quickly becomes an end in itself.
It's perhaps unrealistic to expect any film to maintain this level of brilliance and shock over two and a half hours (although the best can manage it). Shortly after the shootout, the titular wild bunch go down to Mexico, and the movie turns into something like Vera Cruz without as much charm. There are still some great sequences, and Peckinpah maintains a brilliant visual sensibility throughout, drawing on Sergio Leone's spaghetti Western style.
At its root, The Wild Bunch is a critique of the Western hero and the idea of redemptive violence that drives both genre film and American foreign policy. Here violence always escapes the intent of its perpetrators, and becomes an entity in itself, a kind of free-floating virus that is both horrible and erotic. The film ultimately relents on the amorality of its heroes -- by the end we have the American outlaws avenging the good Mexican by shooting down the bad Mexican. It still turns into chaotic carnage, but this carnage is much easier to contain within the Western's moral tropes. Like many directors of his generation, Peckinpah sets out to critique violent masculinity, but can never really escape its orbit, and the aestheticized violence in the film seduces as much as it repulses.
This is not a movie that everyone will like, but it's an important part of film history, and unlike many important parts of film history it still holds some of its power to surprise and shock today. At the very least, everybody should give it a try.