‘If they move, kill ’em!‘
Westerns are often hard going. I find the longer and more complicated they are, the less I enjoy them. High Noon is a great example of what the genre could do if the flab is dispensed with. The Wild Bunch is undoubtedly a western, but its reputation and premise raised expectations. I was to be disappointed…
A group of outlaws go looking for one last score at the tail end of the American West. The introduction of motorcars and machine guns means the wild bunch are a group of men out of time. There could have been a great film exploring this period of transition. Alas, for my money The Wild Bunch isn’t that film.
While the opening shootout is thrilling and modern, The Wild Bunch soon descends into seemingly hours of grizzled men saying grizzled things while the desert sands close in around them. The train sequence is pretty nifty, but Sam Peckinpah’s film has a reputation for being the final word on the western. It isn’t. It many respects it’s exactly the same as all the films that came before it.
In the end, my verdict for this film is the same as for pretty much every western ever made. Genre fans will no doubt love it, but I found little to enjoy here. This form of masculinity is so alien to me that I just can’t seem to access it. Maybe next time.