The Wild Bunch is film that has become known for it's highly visual (the opening bank robbery, the train robbery and the final shoot out cum massacre) action set pieces that it is easy to forget the more subtle character performances that rank among the stars (William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and Robert Ryan) best. Holden is Pike a man who always talking about keeping a code of honour yet never really holds to it, Borgnine is Dutch who always backs up Pike no matter the situation and Ryan is Thornton Pikes former right hand who finds himself hunting his former comrade with a bunch of trigger happy morons. Why The Wild Bunch has stood the test of time is through it's of character study and staging of razor sharp action set peices that i0 testament to the skills of Director Sam Peckinpah.

Gratuitous: Without cause; Unnecessary The opening scene of this Peckinpah orgy of violence is twisted, amoral, and loaded with a massive amount of visual images not needed to tell the story. Every gun shot seems to hit a major artery, accompanied every time by a smacking sound effect to help drive home the point that this person's insides have been disemboweled and scattered around the street.It doesn't get better.This movie gets great reviews, but I'll be darned if I can tell why.

The westerns I prefer to watch are of the spaghetti variety, but The Wild Bunch is a Sam Peckinpah western, and as such promises to be a little more violent and uncompromising than any John Wayne or Gary Cooper flick.Sure enough, the film opens with one hell of a shootout, as the film's anti-heroes, a group of ageing outlaws led by Pike Bishop (William Holden), carry out the daring robbery of a railroad payroll. Leaving countless bloody bodies in their wake, the gang escape only to find out that they have been tricked, their swag bags full of silver washers instead of coins.Still keen for one last big score before they retire, the desperadoes make a deal with a Mexican general, offering to sell him a shipment of rifles and ammo that they plan to steal from a heavily guarded army train. The deal goes sour, however, when one of their number, Angel (Jaime Sánchez), angers the general by keeping some of the rifles to protect his village.With its ultra stylish ballistic action, with slow-motion deaths and juicy squib-work, The Wild Bunch forever changed the face of the western genre, and became a highly influential film for years to come (John Woo and Quentin Tarantino clearly owe a debt to Peckinpah).The film closes with an impressive bullet ballet that still holds up today, with a tripod mounted machine gun cutting a swathe through numerous Mexican extras, before Pike and friends are finally overpowered.Also starring: Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien and Ben Johnson.

Like a Western version of "The Lord of the Rings" without a catalog of place names, the characters in this film travel, travel, travel, sandwiched between two epic Peckinpah gun battles. The motive for the final gun battle seems contrived--characters probably would not behave similarly in reality--so it comes off as nothing more than gratuitous violence.The film contains long stretches with no dialog. That's not necessarily a problem. However, when dialog does occur, it lacks acuity. Standard, stereotypical dialog for a Western. In Peckinpah fashion, the dialog mainly serves to give a mild sense of brutality or offensiveness (e.g. "Damn gringos").Does the film warrant a 2:24 run time? Depends upon the type of experience that a viewer wants. If a viewer prefers compact storytelling, lots of scenes should have hit the editing room floor. If a viewer prefers the full ambiance of traveling three days by horse, the original length satisfies.What's not unique? Standard, stereotypical events for a Western* Drinking and dancing around a campfire * Whores in a hotel room * Brief glimpses of redeeming qualities in bad guysWhat's unique? Everyday sights that are usually expunged from formulaic Westerns* Children in many scenes (they tend to look bored). A simplistic technique to accentuate the roughness of criminals and bounty hunters via contrast. * Breast-feeding Mexican woman who wears a bandoleer * Extended portrayal of Mexico. Lots of Spanish dialog; viewers might want a thorough English subtitles file to achieve the fullest comprehension.