Movies - The Wild Bunch

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	Movies - The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch is a 1969 western film in which an aging group of outlaws hope to have one more score while the West is turning into a modern society. It stars William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sánchez, Ben Johnson, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Bo Hopkins and Dub Taylor.

The screenplay was written by Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner and Sam Peckinpah. It was directed by Peckinpah.

It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical) and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced.

Originally quite controversial because of its graphic violence, The Wild Bunch is also noted for making the use of slow motion shots in mainstream motion pictures acceptable. The technique of slow motion had existed since the earliest days of film, and was often used in avant-garde and New Wave films, but in the years following The Wild Bunch, slow-motion became a common method of emphasising action sequences in movies, especially action-adventure movies.

In 1993, Warner Bros. resubmitted the film to the MPAA ratings board prior to an expected rerelease. To Warners' surprise, the originally R-rated film was given an NC-17 rating, delaying the rerelease while the decision was appealed.

In 1999 the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Warner Bros recently released a newly restored version of The Wild Bunch in a two disc special edition on January 10, 2006. This edition includes an audio commentary by Peckinpah scholars, two documentaries concerning the making of the film and never seen before outtakes from the film.

Plot Summary

The movie takes place in 1913, during the height of the Mexican Revolution. In the fictional town of San Rafael, Texas (a fictional town named after the military academy in California Peckinpah attended as a teenager), also referred to as Starbuck, the Wild Bunch - led by Pike Bishop (Holden), and also including Dutch Engstrom (Borgnine), Lyle and Tector Gorch (Oates and Johnson), Angel (Sanchez), Buck (Rayford Barnes), and Crazy Lee (Hopkins), among others - enters the town, with half of them dressed as cavalry soldiers. They ride past a group of children who are torturing a pair of scorpions by putting them on a hill of red ants (this image was suggested by Emilio Fernandez; he said that he and his friends had done similar things as children), an image of the violence inherited from nature. The gang breaks into the railroad company office and holds it up, but on the roof of a hotel across the street is a ragtag posse of bounty hunters, led by Patrick Harrigan (Albert Dekker), a railroad detective, and Deke Thornton (Ryan), a former member of the gang being ambushed, along with scruffy bounty hunters Coffer (Martin), T.C. (Jones), Huey (Paul Harper), and Jess (stuntman Bill Hart).

The gang's escape is interrupted by the local temperance union, which is holding a parade in the town, led by Reverend Wainscoat (Taylor), playing "Shall We Gather At The River?" (a hymn used as a funeral song in innumerable John Ford Westerns, used here for ironic effect). Various members of the gang, inside and out of the bank, spot the bounty hunters and Pike uses a bank teller as a decoy, throwing him out of the bank to draw the fire of the bounty hunters, allowing for the gang's escape.

A vicious, confusing gunfight occurs, with gang members, bounty hunters, and civilians caught in the crossfires, resulting in numerous deaths. Only six members of the gang escape - Pike, Dutch, the Gorches, Angel, and Buck, who has been shot in the face and blinded - and the rest of the gang is killed. Crazy Lee is left behind to hold the bank patrons as hostages; when Harrigan and Thornton's gang descend from the roof of the hotel to scavenge from the various dead bodies, he is ultimately killed by Harrigan. Outside of town, Pike shoots Buck, who is unable to continue riding due to his injuries.

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Movies - The Wild Bunch

Plot Summary

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