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 've heard so much about Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild
Bunch" that I feel as if I've seen the movie hundreds of times. Since the
DVD claims to be the Original Director's Version (that is, everything has been
restored the way Peckinpah envisioned it), everything that supposedly made this
movie one of the greats is here. It's a little disheartening, then, that I
didn't find the film to be profoundly great, but just slightly above good.
Here's the plot for "The Wild Bunch": Aging
outlaws, led by William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, lives by their own sets of
code, one of which is: Your word is your bond. When one of their own is released
from prison in order to lead the manhunt for them, the outlaws head south to
Mexico, where they get mixed up with a Mexican General fighting a civil war. By
the end of the movie, the Wild Bunch "kills half of Mexico."
I don't exactly remember where that "kills half of
Mexico" quote came from, but it's quite appropriate when, at the end, the
Wild Bunch decides to go out in a blaze of glory and kills everyone within
earshot in the process. Despite the bloodbath that opens and ends it, the film
is actually not that action-packed. There is an elongated skirmish when the
outlaws rob an U.S. Army train for its cargo, but that amounts to a running
gunfight that fails to thrill in the same way the opening and ending gunbattles
do.
Much of "The Wild Bunch" is devoted to the aging
outlaws reminiscing about their life, their relationships (most notably with
turncoat Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan)), and how the Wild West is all but dead,
leaving no room for men such as them. To be sure, the Wild Bunch are not the
best of men; for one, they kill women and children and have no compunction about
using innocent people as shields. These men are outlaws in the purest sense and
not romanticized versions.
But there are some big problems with "The Wild
Bunch." The Mexican characters, for one, are gross stereotypes of the
greaser and bandito. They look, talk, and even swagger like cartoons rather than
flesh and blood. The Mexican women fare no better. The bulk of the film, set
against a civil war between the crazed Mexican General and his (unseen) nemesis,
is so disjointed that I wander why a little bit more effort wasn't put into that
part of the script, especially when it takes up so much screen time.
There is also the matter of Deke Thornton and the inbred
rednecks that make up his posse. Having seen the Wild Bunch brazenly ride into a
town and shoot their way out, killing about 50 people along the way, I kept
asking myself why Pike and Dutch didn't just turn their horse around and take
Thornton head-on toward the end of the film. These men are rough riders, they've
murdered and slaughtered hundreds, and yet they flee from Thornton and his 5 or
so rednecks? I don't buy it.
None of the above means I don't appreciate "The Wild
Bunch." I liked the characters and their obsessive devotion to their
(slightly skewed) code of honor. Despite the fact that these men do things that
would deny them something as intangible as a code of conduct, they actually do
possess such codes, and would die for them.
Is "The Wild Bunch" as good as everyone says it
is? As a Western, it has some nice moments, but not nearly enough. As a straight action film, it's
lagging in the middle, but has a knockout opening and ending sequence. As a Man's Movie, it
delivers somewhat. When they
say the Wild Bunch "kills half of Mexico" at the end of the film, they
meant it.
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