Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9952 in DVD
• Released on: 1997-05-21
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 145 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Here's how director Sam Peckinpah described his motivation behind The Wild Bunch at the time of the film's 1969 release: "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. The Wild Bunch is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." All of these statements are true, but they don't begin to cover the impact that Peckinpah's film had on the evolution of American movies. Now the film is most widely recognized as a milestone event in the escalation of screen violence, but that's a label of limited perspective. Of course, Peckinpah's bloody climactic gunfight became a masterfully directed, photographed, and edited ballet of graphic violence that transcended the conventional Western and moved into a slow-motion realm of pure cinematic intensity. But the film--surely one of the greatest Westerns ever made--is also a richly thematic tale of, as Peckinpah said, "bad men in changing times." The year is 1913 and the fading band of thieves known as the Wild Bunch (led by William Holden as Pike) decide to pull one last job before retirement. But an ambush foils their plans, and Peckinpah's film becomes an epic yet intimate tale of betrayed loyalties, tenacious rivalry, and the bunch's dogged determination to maintain their fading code of honor among thieves. The 144-minute director's cut enhances the theme of male bonding that recurs in many of Peckinpah's films, restoring deleted scenes to deepen the viewer's understanding of the friendship turned rivalry between Pike and his former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who now leads a posse in pursuit of the bunch, a dimension that adds resonance to an already classic American film. The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece that should not be defined strictly in terms of its violence, but as a story of mythic proportion, brimming with rich characters and dialogue and the bittersweet irony of outlaw traditions on the wane. --Jeff Shannon

Amazon.com
One of the best action movies ever made, in a cleaned-up print restoring crucial parts of the story. No cavalry ever rode in with more epochal impact than the Wild Bunch in the legendary opening scene. Their steel-eyed leader, Pike (William Holden), and his robbers in stolen army uniforms help an old lady across the street, and then spark a massacre led by Pike's old crony Thornton (Robert Ryan), sprung from jail to hunt down his old gang. In just a few minutes, Sam Peckinpah sets the scene--a dusty Texas town in 1913--sketches a dozen vividly individualized characters, and choreographs one of the most realistic, influential, brilliantly photographed shootouts under the pitiless sun. The cast is superb (even Ernest Borgnine!), the dialog crackling, the bitterly ambiguous moral of the story hard-earned. It's the deeper, dark flip side to 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Consider buying the letterbox Wild Bunch, the review collection Doing It Right, and the Peckinpah bio "If They Move... Kill 'Em!" --Tim Appelo

Customer Reviews

Wild Bunch
Saw this movie back in the 70's and have loved it ever since. Peckinpah excels here as do the actors and their performances. Holdens character is the most memorable

Overrated
Director Sam Peckinpah's two hour and twenty-five minute long 1969 Western classic, The Wild Bunch, is certainly an influential and important film, but, compared to the other great Western released that year, Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West, it has not held up nearly as well. There are several reasons for this fact, and by making that statement I am not stating that Peckinpah's film is in any way a bad film. No. It's merely a good film that has been passed by later films, and lacks the depth Leone's film still does. Part of the reason is that Leone's film is far more stylized and revolutionary. No, that film is not nearly as violent as Peckinpah's, and it is the violence of The Wild Bunch (and occasionally claims of its mainstreaming slow motion cinematography mixed with quick cutting) that is usually the lynchpin to arguments for its revolutionary status, not its more straightforward and derivative storytelling; although the earlier Bonnie And Clyde, by director Arthur Penn, deserves more of the credit (or blame) for mainstreaming over the top and slow motion violence.
Compare the openings of the two films. In Peckinpah's film there is the great opening montage where the heroes/villains are introduced, and then the action is frozen into a black and white image. We see children sadistically dropping scorpions on to red anthills, then setting the wee creatures ablaze. Then we see the heroes, dressed as good guy American soldiers become vicious killers as they rob a bank, then get in a shootout with bounty hunters during a Temperance March. Leone's film shows almost nothing happen for the same amount of time. We see a train station captured, and wait. This is visual poesy. Peckinpah's is prose, albeit with tweaks.
Now consider the two leading men used as psychopathic killers. In Peckinpah's film it's William Holden, a second level leading man. But in Leone's film it's Henry Fonda- one of Hollywood's towering filmic giants of American decency. Leone's choice is far more fundamentally disturbing. Then there is the actual storylines of the films. For all the claims of upsetting the apple cart, Peckinpah's tale is punctuated with numerous poorly scripted scenes. There are numerous moments where the characters in the gang simply do not speak realistically, and where they force laughter, like at the end of a bad tv sitcom- there's the scene with the sauna, with the whores, the scene where Angel's villagers steal weapons from the gang, and others. Leone has no such moments, and although there is less actual violence in Leone's films, there is nothing within Peckinpah's film as primally shocking nor disconcerting as watching Fonda's character murder the whole McBain clan.... Despite its reputation, this overrated film gives no real insight into either the Old West nor the human condition, and certainly nothing new. Too much of it, especially in interior stage shots, and in some of the dialogue and forced laughter between the gang members, feels like refried Bonanza, or other banal tv Westerns of the era, whereas Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West was wholly original. Peckinpah's film is a good, but not great, film, even if it is an enjoyable diversion for an afternoon, and was certainly influential- just look at the final shot of Lyle Gorch at the machine gun and there is an almost identical pose struck by James Franciscus at the end of Beneath The Planet Of the Apes, released a year later. If one goes into this film fresh, it will be an enjoyable film, a cut above the simpleminded John Wayne tripe that dominated the silver screen for the three decades prior, but if one expects a true masterpiece, disappointment is bound to follow. Choose ignorance....you know how the rest of that saying goes.

Look At What "Bonnie and Clyde" Did!
This Original Director's Cut version of "The Wild Bunch" is a real treat as they did an excellent job with the restoration and especially with the sound quality as the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound is excellent although despite heroic attempts at picture quality restoration, there are many white spots and other imperfections in a number of frames. Hopefully the Blu-ray version took the opportunity to clean these up.

This is a good adventure flick although I do call its originality into question when quite obviously this film borrows from a number of other films that shortly preceded it. For the violence that begins and ends the movie see "Bonnie and Clyde"; for the theme of outlaws becoming obsolete and hence wanting to make that one big job and then "retiring" see "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". See the same for the use of a modern sounding soundtrack for an anachronistic effect as at some points the score reminded me of an old 70s police drama effect, frontal nudity "The Graduate" etc.

However, just because this film borrowed heavily from themes that were originally shown by films that just preceded it doesn't make this in any way a bad film but it does in my mind put some perspective into it and hopefully remove some of the hype that accompanies it. Although a good western, this is certainly not the best ever; for that you'll need to watch "Unforgiven" and even "High Noon" and "Butch Cassidy ... Kid" not to mention "Stagecoach" are a lot better than this.

William Holden and Robert Ryan also seem miscast for this as I just couldn't see them as the down and dirty outlaws that they were supposed to be as they just seemed too decent. They looked so out of place during the flashback scene in the whorehouse and somehow when trying to explain the gash in his leg, Holden's character while describing his adulterous ways almost made me laugh it was so hard to believe. The others though were excellently cast although Ben Johnson's first scene when he blatantly tries to copy the Walter Huston mad outburst scene from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" I found stupid and unnecessarily plagiaristic.

Overall a good adventure film but it copies too much from prior films of the time to be a great classic for me.