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Summary: Overrated Macho Bore-fest with ZERO sense of humor and wit
Review: Technical qualities aside and leaving out the excellent final shootout scene which slow-motion blood-ballets its way onto a higher artistic plane, the ENTIRE rest of this film is MEDIOCRE AT BEST. Not only is it NOT the greatest Western of all time, and not even close to being one of the top 20 Westerns ever made, it's not even Peckinpah's best Western (that honor belongs to "Ride the High Country," a much less bloody and far superior film).And even in the action scenes most of what Peckinpah did was to take the already hugely popular Sergio Leone level of violence, magnify it, and squirt some blood in the air in super-slow motion, while leaving out all the humor, lunacy, and imagination that makes Leone's films so great.
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Summary: One Outstanding Western That Stands The Test Of Time!
Review: What an excellent film. The acting was absolutely flawless and the script and story-line were simply spectacular. When I saw this when I was 12, I was completely shocked at the extreme graphic violence it contained, particulary the bloody finale. Now at age 25 I understand that the violence in this film is really required to carry out the story, not like many movies today which simply glorify violence and gore. "The Wild Bunch" is Definently one of the greatest western films ever made. Own it today!
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Summary: Best western ever!
Review: I've always enjoyed westerns. As a younger kid I almost grew up on John Wayne. So, when I saw this movie for the first time I was quite surprised. Not that John Wayne isn't great. The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are both fantastic films and 2 of my all time favorites. However, the level of violence in this movie immediately set it apart. The shootouts are spectacular and have influenced virtually all of today's action films, especially those by directors such as John Woo. Of course, this wasn't the main point of the film, but merely a technical flourish, and it's a shame it's the aspect of the movie that's most remembered. The story is fairly simple but highly moving. There's a large amount of symbolism and the movie has a very melancholy feel to it. All in all, it's fantastic. The acting is stupendously done by an unbelievable cast, the script is quite good, the directing, editing, and cinematography all are amazing and primerally what made the movie famous/infamous. Highly recommended. Buy it or at least see it, but make sure it's the director's cut.
Rating:
Summary: Sheer Brilliance
Review: This film, released in 1969, is one of this reviewer's all time favorites. Sam Peckinpah was such a brilliant director, and much of Mr. Peckinpah shows through William Holden's superb performance, as Pike. Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and Edmund O'Bryan lead in this powerful film, that actually caused some theater-goers to walkout of the theater, in '69. The violence is still outstanding, even by today's standard, that many seem to think of when you mention Sam Peckinpah. This flick is truly astonishing, and the dvd-format is great. The 2:85 aspect ratio really puts this remarkable film into perspective. A must-have for this reviewer. The only potential drawback to this dvd is that it is a "2-sided" disc, meaning halfway through the film, you have to...that's right; flip the disc over. Another thing that this reviewer and many of my friends don't care for is that the disc is secured in a "snap-case" as are all Warner Bros. dvd's. But nevertheless, if you own a dvd player, and love this movie like I do, it's worth it.
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Summary: Peckinpah Intact
Review: Peckinpah made The Wild Bunch after watching his previous effort - Major Dundee - eviscerated by its producer of sixteen minutes of vital footage. The Wild Bunch was only his fourth feature, but it was easily his most ambitious in terms of finding and holding a personal style. Of course, it was cut after advance screenings had left backward audiences rather baffled (and/or offended). Now, at last, we have Peckinpah's cut, and in widescreen format, giving us a glimpse of what had never been seen on the Big Screen. And what a magnificent spectacle it is! The scenes that were cut shed more light on the William Holden/Robert Ryan friendship (and why it turned sour), plus it gives us some rather cryptic glimpses into the character of General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez in a splendid role). The final sequence, in which nearly everyone is killed, is like something out of Greek tragedy - the curtain falls on a stage littered with corpses. A beautiful, and quite lyric, masterpiece.
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Summary: The Wild Bunch 30th Anniversary Issue: Honoring the Greatest
Review: "The Wild Bunch," Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece, deserves being honored. So much has been made of Peckinpah's code of volience, using slow-motion to make death even more excrutiating on the screen, but many have missed the passion and poetry Peckinpah has put into this film. It has one of the greatest casts assembled for a western. Wiliam Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmund O'Brien, Ben Johnson(one of the great all-time cowboy actors) Warren Oates and Jaime Sanchez are a complex, humorous bunch, even though Ryan, once one of bunch, is sprung from prison to "dog" the bunch and with his rag-tag bunch of bounty hunters, the dregs of the west, he wishes out loud that he were with the bunch.The battles, especially at the beginning and end of this film,are famous and much imitated but not equaled. Yet in between, we get to intimately know this bunch, in a wondferfully shot scene in the villiage of Angel, who was born there, and the villigers know this bunch are bandits but treat them with respect all the same and the send off, when the bunch rides slowly off, being given gifts like flowers or a sombrero, is as moving a scene as you'll see in any movie. Peckinpah loves Mexico and cinematographer Lucien Ballard has captures the dusty, brightly lit exspanses, the sounds of the river crossings, and the deep rust and ochre of the canyons and the arroyos. This film is a poem to the end of the romantic West, a poem of regret, and also a celebration of the joys of being alive. Every frame is full of vitality and kinetic energy. And the battles. Yes they are bloody and Peckinpah wants to show really what it is like to lose one's life, painful and stunning. The last battle is one of the classic battles in any genre in history, for it seems to go on forever, yet count the minutes-it really doen't last that long but each moment a ballet of violence and action and death. Peckinpah made other wonderful westerns like "Ride the High Country," which follows some of the same themes of "getting too old for our guns," and regret for a lost West passing into legend. No one cronicled that rite of violent passage better than Sam Peckinpah in "The Wild Bunch." It is a film to be treasured for much more than its violence, a film that is on my ten top films of all time. Today, Peckinpah's vision speaks volumnes, that so many have tried his methods but lacked his passion not just for violence as an end in itself, but how he identified with the people of the West, how they learned to live in a harsh land, live and die, stubbornly sticking to a personal code of dignity. It is another film that sends ripples far beyond its genre, risking so much but paying off with one of the most bravura pieces of film-making ever made. May it glow by southwest firelight for another thirty years and beyond for those who love great story telling.
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Summary: A groundbreaking classic of the genre
Review: Perhaps rivaled only by The Magnificent Seven for the title of the greatest Western of all time. Now, in the day of John Woo and Jerry Bruckheimer, it is easy to forget how different the slow motion and rapid cut angle portrayal of the extreme violence was some thirty years ago. It was certainly like nothing I had ever seen before, and has been hard to rival since. The opening scene, robbing the railroad office would have been the climactic battle in just about any other movie. Somehow, the movie seems to get even better from there. The closing battle scene of the four members of the Bunch vs. the army is done as artfully as a ballet. Great dialogue, from William Holden and especially Robert Ryan: "We are after men, and I wish to God I was with them." Ernest Bourgnine goes though the entire film delivering looks that are each worth pages of dialogues from mere mortals. This is an unabashedly male movie, about men becoming anachronisms as the world progresses past them -- witness the scene where they see an automobile, and the incredulous ststement "Hey Dutch, I hear they got one of those up North that can FLY!" They know they are on their way out, but want to do it one more time just right, and succeed with gusto, even into death. Edmund O'Brien has the great last line :"It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do." Whether it is like it used to be or not doesn't really matter, but this movie sure will do!
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Summary: Quantitative Evaluation
Review: Audio Merits:8/10;Video Merits:9/10;Scenario Merits:8/10;Cinematographic Merits:10/10;Musical Merits:10/10;Overall Artistic Performance:10/10; DVD Extras:8/10;Recording Total Quality:9/10 Professor's Recommendation: A Center of Excellence for western category
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Summary: THE WILD BUNCH.- A Mexican footnote.
Review: Sam Peckinpah's 'The Wild Bunch' is a masterpiece western. Not the best ever made, but close. So don't think I don't like this movie because I love it. However, since Mexicans are its villains, perhaps you'd be interested to read an opinion from this side of the border. The Mexico of 'The Wild Bunch' looks more like a metaphor than a real place. It is both Heaven and Hell; the theatre where the bunch will find Death but also Redemption. Accordingly, every Mexican depicted in the picture is either a saint or a monster (no middle ground here, except for the Mexican member of the Bunch, who is aptly named "Angel", although a fallen one). This serves the story splendidly, for it's meant to be an epic ballad and not a travelogue, but it does jolt the Mexican viewer because the "good Mexico" is portrayed so idyllic it's unreal, while the "bad Mexico" is very, very accurate; in fact, no American movie has captured the look, sound, feel, texture and carnage of the Mexican Revolution as this one has (even if the grandiose final scene, where the Bunch kills hundreds of heavily armed soldiers all by themselves and none of the four falls down even when riddled by bullets, defies all logic!). Perhaps that's why it was banned in Mexico back when it was released in 1969. Funny, for it was filmed in Mexico as well. The Texas bordertown you see at the begining of the story is actually Parras, Coahuila, and many of its citizens acted as extras in the movie: white ones as "Texans", brown ones as -what else?- Mexicans! Don Raúl Madero, brother of Francisco I. Madero, the man who started the Mexican Revolution, appears ...as a Texan! Even the two German officers are Mexican! So, as you can see, we Mexicans come in all shapes, sizes and colors, and hardly fit these two tiresome "noble peasant"-"greaser bandito" stereotypes American movies seem so comfortable with! I hope some day Hollywood realizes this and "walk the extra mile" to portray us for what we are: a very complex and diverse society. Neither saints, nor monsters, and certainly not mere bowling pins! P.S.: Many great Mexican directors, all personal friends of Peckinpah, appear in the film. Emilio "Indio" Fernández (Mapache) and Chano Urueta (Angel's grandfather) were the best of our cinema's Golden Age. Fernando Wagner (German officer) was also a competent theatre director, and Alfonso Arau (Herrera) is best known for his international hit 'Like Water for Chocolate'. Jorge Russek (Zamorra) was an outstanding photographer for National Geographic, and Sonia Amelio (Teresa) is a world-aclaimmed dancer (she was even awarded with an "Order of Lenin" back in the Soviet Union). And just for the record, the word "Mapache" ("racoon") stands for "coward thief". No Mexican general, no matter how corrupt, would use, I believe, such a nickname! And since Mapache is "a killer working for Huerta", the action takes place in 1913, not 1916 (Huerta was ousted in early 1914).
Rating:
Summary: A great western and an excellent DVD.
Review: This movie is a classic. Peckinpah should be revered for the technical accomplishments in this film. It has a great story and incredible use of slo-mo violence. The final gunfight is just amazing considering when this film was made. William Holden gives the great performance as an outlaw with a code of ethics. "Give'em Hell Pike!" This DVD is well worth the purchase for the documentary and the restored film.
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