Deliverance (1972) *****

This movie is famous for two things: First, the song “Dueling Banjos” and its link with scary, rural people. Second is the “squeal like a pig” rape scene. It's a shame that the film is mostly remembered for its most sensationalistic elements, as there is a lot more to it.

Four friends, Lewis (Burt Reynolds), Ed (Jon Voight), Bobby (Ned Beatty), and Drew (Ronny Cox) enter the Appalachian backwoods of Georgia for a canoe trip down a dammed river. Full of rapids and trout, the river will soon disappear under a rising reservoir. The friends debate the merits of damming such a river, with Lewis arguing for the value of wilderness, while his more city-fied friends point out the advantages of hydroelectric power and nice, tame motorboating on the reservoir.

The adventure starts even before they get on the river, as they wander the mountain roads and meet a variety of inbred-looking hillbillies. Both groups view each other with suspicion, but Drew does manage to make a connection with a banjo-playing young man by pulling out his guitar. The two play a rousing version of “Dueling Banjos,” (which became a worldwide hit.) As you may have guessed, this friendly interlude with the locals doesn't last.

First, though, there is some whitewater paddling. Director John Boorman got stunning footage of the actors paddling some impressive rapids, making the film required viewing for anyone remotely interested in rivers. The friends also fish and camp out, giving Bobby and Drew their first night under the stars. Meanwhile, Lewis waxes poetic about wilderness, survival, and other manly things.

At some point, as can happen on float trips, the party gets separated. Lewis and Bobby meet up with a couple of mountain men who are more than just scary-looking. The hillbillies have no regard for a couple of city boys, and they proceed to rape Bobby, forcing their portly victim to “squeal like a pig.” They are about to do the same to Ed, remarking that he “sure does have a pretty mouth,” when Lewis and Drew arrive on the scene.

That's all I'll say about the plot. If you haven't seen “Deliverance,” and you absolutely should, it's too good for me to ruin any more of the action for you.

Based on the novel by James Dickey, “Deliverance” is directed by John Boorman, director of the classic 1967 noir “Point Blank.” While the film reportedly adheres pretty closely to the book, Dickey apparently grumbled bitterly about any changes, ultimately getting into a fistfight with Boorman. Dickey was banned from the set, although he was later allowed to return for a cameo as the local sheriff.

“Deliverance” is a rural horror film, but it's a lot more than that. Even as the movie turns the hillbillies, the mountains, and the wild river into sources of danger, it also celebrates them. We see opposing sides of rural life. Some of the locals obviously visit suspicion and much worse upon the men, but at the end, some local people welcome them into their home for dinner. We see a small town that will be swallowed up by the reservoir, a whole way of life lost, but the cab driver tells the men that being flooded will be “the best thing that ever happened to this town.”

As much as I love this movie, it's possible that, on average, men will dig it more than women. With its violence, macho themes, and outdoor adventure, the movie does skew towards traditional male interests. This doesn't mean women should avoid it, though, any more than men should miss out on Jane Austin's stories.

For me, this is a classic that will always bear repeat viewing. They say you never float the same river twice, and it's the same with this film. I find something new each time I watch, and I'll always be ready for another trip down the river.

5 stars out of 5

Deadpool 2 (2018) ***1/2

So I saw the trailer for the "Deadpool" sequel, which seemed to be about him rescuing a child in danger, and they had that quote from Deadpool's girlfriend, “Children are a chance to be better.” Honestly, I threw up in my mouth a little. I figured the movie was going to be a sentimental turd. Fortunately, I was wrong!

Early in the film, Deadpool's (Ryan Reynolds) girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) gets killed by vengeful gangsters, sending Deadpool into a suicidal depression. Problem is, Deadpool can't really kill himself. Whatever genetic changes happened to him, the guy is basically like a starfish now, able to regenerate after any injury. So Colossus, from the X-Men, nurses him back to physical-if-not-mental health, and invites him along on a mutant-related emergency. A flame-throwing teen named Firefist is having a meltdown, and Deadpool and the gang help rein him in. Both Deadpool and the kid wind up in prison, wearing collars that neutralize their powers and make them sitting ducks for a time-traveling assassin named Cable (Josh Brolin).

So, “Deadpool 2” has a kid in distress, which is a hackneyed story device, but it's way funnier and funner than it has a right to be. It takes the crass, cheeky, self-aware humor of the first “Deadpool” and cranks it up a notch. The movie introduces a new superhero, Domino (Zazie Beetz), whose powers include being really lucky and smokin' hot. We also meet a new villain, Juggernaut. He's a fan fave from the comics, and Deadpool geeks out over him on our behalf when they meet.

The desire for revenge against those who have wronged us is a basic, human emotion. Tons of stories in book, stage, and film have revenge as their theme, some glorifying it and some painting revenge as a dark road that is best not traveled. That “dark road” theme is a tough one to carry off. As an audience, we want revenge as much as the protagonist does, and it's way more satisfying to watch them cut loose and deal out some justice. This idea that once you start killing, it changes you, and it's hard to stop, may be true, but it's abstract, and it takes a good writer to convince us of that. The “Deadpool 2” writers do about as good a job as most. They certainly don't handle it as well as Hamlet, or even "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith",  but they do better than the “The Dark Knight” writers, who never convinced me that Batman shouldn't just finish off the Joker.

In “Deadpool 2,” I would say that the attempts at moralizing bring the film down some, and distract from the humor. Watch the film for the humor and the action, in that order, and don't worry to much about the philosophical themes. Viewed on its own terms, this sequel is a ton of fun, and possibly better than the original.

3.5 stars out of 5

Polar (2019, Netflix) ***

The main thing I learned from “Polar” is that if you can get Mads Mikkelsen in your movie, do it. This film would be almost un-watchable if Mikkelsen weren't so good at playing a bad-ass killer. He turns “Polar” into some truly fun trash.

Mikkelsen plays assassin Duncan Vizla, known in the underworld as the “Black Kaiser.” He's an aging bad-ass looking forward to his 50^th birthday and an $8 million pension payment. The problem is that his employer, a pale, chubby psychopath named Blut (Matt Lucas), would rather keep the money for himself. He has decided to deal with his pension obligations by killing off all his retired and retiring assassins. Duncan finds himself hunted by a young team of killers. They are less talented than Duncan, but he has a weak spot in the form of a young woman (Vanessa Hudgeons) he meets in his chilly, Montana hideout.

To judge “Polar” by conventional standards probably misses the point. The story started out in 2012 as a “silent” (no words) webcomic by Spanish artist Victor Santos. The stark, gory webcomic was eventually turned into a graphic novel by Dark Horse Comics, this time with dialogue. When it came time for a live-action film, Netflix bought the rights, and released it straight-to-streaming. From beginning to end, this is niche material.

The film has met with almost universal critical disgust, and I can see why. With its mustache-twirly villains and comic-book styling, the film is bound to confuse the casual action-movie fan, and the story and characters are not strong enough to overcome the oddness, the way a movie like “Pulp Fiction” did. The story is designed for an early-teen audience weaned on manga graphic novels, but the movie is not really appropriate for them. (“Polar” is unrated, but would clearly earn a hard R.) The film is constantly gory, with brutal violence. There's an extended torture sequence that is gratuitous, graphic, and hard to watch. On the other hand, there's an extended sex sequence with Costa Rican actress Ruby O. Fee that is also gratuitous and graphic, and very easy to watch. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

In other words, “Polar” is what it is, and I actually enjoyed it. It's a revenge-graphic-novel movie with nonstop action, hot babes, and bad dudes, along the lines of 2005's “Sin City.” If you liked that one, you'll probably like “Polar.”

3 stars out of 5

Hereditary (2018) ***1/2

This is one that I wasn't so sure about when I finished watching it. Sure, it was creepy as hell, but it was also confusing as hell, and I wasn't really sure what I had just seen. It took reading some explanations on the internet for me to decide that “Hereditary” is a decent horror flick.

Toni Collette plays Annie, married to Steve (Gabriel Byrne), with two kids, Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Charlie, by the way, is weird and weird-looking, an emotionally and physically stunted 13-year-old who likes to make weird noises and cut the heads off of dead animals. The story starts with the family headed to the funeral of Annie's mom Ellen, another odd duck. As Annie declares at the eulogy, “My mother was a private person. She had private rituals.” Little surprise, then, that there are so many strangers at the funeral. More surprising to Steve, (although not to us, because this is a horror film, after all) is when he gets a call that Ellen's grave has been dug up.

Steve decides not to upset Annie with this bit of information, and so the quiet, tense family goes along with their sort-of grieving. Charlie, who was close to Ellen, is the only one who misses her, although both she and Annie start seeing Ellen's apparition.

Annie joins a grief support group to help her work through her complicated family history. We learn that Annie had a schizophrenic brother who committed suicide as a teen, leaving a note claiming that their mother was “trying to put people in me.” Her dad became demented and starved himself to death. Meanwhile, the relationship between Annie and Ellen was fraught even by the usual mother-daughter standards. The family had no contact with Ellen during Peter's formative years, so Annie over-compensated by letting Ellen help raise Charlie, and now Annie worries that that may have messed Charlie up.

Then a major tragedy strikes, throwing Annie into a tailspin of grief. A support group member shows Annie how to perform a séance, and in doing so, Annie unleashes a terrifying force upon the family.

That's more plot exposition than I usually like to give, but trust me, you still don't know what “Hereditary” is about, and you're smarter than I am if you understand it by the end of the movie. The atmospherics are creepy enough, with throbbing sub-bass notes in the score to remind us that this is a horror movie and not just a story about family dynamics and tragedy (We kind of need this reminder during the first half.).

Once the supernatural stuff really gets going, the movie will have you on the edge of your seat, but by the end, I was really scratching my head. This is one that you will either need to watch multiple times, read about afterwards on the internet, or both. It's actually a pretty cool, messed-up story once you understand what it is you saw. For me, there's a bit too much of an anything-can-happen-at-any-time atmosphere. I tend to prefer horror films like “Green Room,”where the monsters are actually human, or “It Follows,” where there is one supernatural element, but it follows some simple rules and logic. “Hereditary” is just all over the place. You never get that sense of control, of knowing what is going on and trying to project what the characters should do.

That's also kind of the point of “Hereditary.” Early on, there's a scene where Peter's class at school is discussing the Greek tragedy “Heracles.” They discuss the fact that the characters' fates are out of their control, and whether that makes the story more, or less, tragic. Annie and her family are pushed along towards a terrible end by forces outside their control. She tries to understand the process and fight back, but any sense of control that she, or the audience, gains in this story is illusory.

Like I said, I prefer a horror film where there is a set of rules you can grasp and then root for the main character to take control of the situation. That never works out in “Hereditary.” Weeks later, I'm still thinking about the movie, but it's mostly the mythology and the clues to what is going on. I find that I'm not at all pondering the choices the characters made, because it turns out they have no choice at all. To me, that's a weakness in the film, but I can definitely see why critics liked it. It's scary and atmospheric, and definitely worth a watch if you feel like getting creeped out.

3.5 stars out of 5

Roma (2018) ****

It took a while to get motivated to watch “Roma,” even though it's been streaming on Netflix for weeks. The black-and-white, Spanish language Oscar-bait has been described as director Alfonso Cuaron's love letter to Mexico City, and touted for telling the story of a maid/nanny, an “indigenous woman who is usually in the background.” Sounds like a real snooze-fest, right? Well, truth be told, the movie does start out pretty slow, but you gotta ride it out, because it's actually really good.

We meet Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a maid for a moderately-wealthy doctor and his family. She cleans and looks after the kids and gossips with her co-worker, Adela (Nancy Garcia Garcia), the cook. It's hard to guess these girls' ages, but they are probably only around 20 years old. They are loved by the family's four children, but for the parents, they mostly exist in the background of family life.

That's the point Cuaron is trying to make in “Roma.” Here, the focus is on Cleo's life, and the doctor and his wife, Sofia (Marina de Tavira), are in the background of her life. While their upper-middle-class marriage is falling apart, Cleo is lovingly raising their kids and spending her free time dating shifty guys from the slums. I don't want to give away any more of what little plot there is. There isn't some sinister plot or big twist. This is really just a slice-of-life kind of story. It's a tale of two seemingly very different women (Sofia and Cleo) pulling themselves through adversity and supporting each other. The strength is not in the minimal plot, but in the incredibly natural performances of the actresses.

Roger Ebert once said that movies are “a machine for generating empathy,” and “Roma” does just that. It allows us to really experience Cleo's life, including the love she has for Sofia's kids, and the love they return to her. (Alfonso Cuaron was raised by a nanny like Cleo, which he gives as a reason for wanting to tell this story.) Star Yalitza Aparicio had no prior acting experience. Her job is admittedly made easier by the fact that, as an indigenous woman, Cleo is naturally rather stoic and unexpressive. All the more remarkable, then, that she is able to make us feel so much. Marina de Tavira is also excellent as a wife picking herself up after being abandoned by her feckless husband.

Cuaron uses black-&-white film to stunning effect in “Roma.” The film doesn't take us to majestic vistas, but the cinematography makes ordinary places look stunning. An especially beautiful scene involves Sofia's extended family fighting a wildfire in the countryside.

“Roma” is not for everyone. It's an artsy, slowly-paced, foreign language film. If you dig this kind of thing, though, you will not want to let this film slip past you.

4 stars out of 5

Annihilation (2018) **

“Annihilation,” by writer/director Alex Garland (“Ex Machina” “28 Days Later” “Never Let Me Go”), is pretty good science fiction up to a certain point. That point occurs about 20 seconds into the film, which opens with a meteor burning through the atmosphere and striking the ground near a lighthouse. It's decent stuff. Then we switch over to biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) giving an obnoxiously pretentious pre-med lecture, and the film is really all downhill from there.

Lena, we learn, is mourning the loss of her missing-in-action, military husband, Kane. Then, mysteriously, Kane shows up at their house, disoriented and sick. On the way to the hospital, Lena and Kane are kidnapped and taken to a government facility near the lighthouse where the asteroid landed. From a remarkably forthcoming psychologist (Jennifer Jason Leigh), we learn that for 3 years, a shimmery force field has been slowly spreading out from the site. They can't see or detect anything beyond “the shimmer,” and every team sent in to investigate has simply disappeared. Kane is the first person to come back out, and he has no memory of anything, and seems to be dying.

Lena volunteers to join the psychologist and 3 other female scientists on a mission into the shimmer. There, they experience time disorientation and progressive mental deterioration as they explore an apocalyptic landscape of beautiful and dangerous genetic mutations.

There's no reason this couldn't be a fun concept, but with “Annihilation,” a talented director and cast somehow managed to create a complete dud. First and foremost, Lena sucks all the joy out of whatever room she's in. Even in flashbacks of her life before Kane disappeared, their relationship seems mostly stale and miserable. Jennifer Jason Leigh's character isn't exactly brimming with personality, either. Tessa Thompson is talented and gorgeous, but she's totally wasted here.

Then there's the “science” in this film. I was okay with the mixing of plant and animal DNA going on inside the shimmer, and I wish they had explored those possibilities more. I was mostly willing to go along with the ridiculous footage of dividing cells that Lena views through her portable microscope. But when Thompson's character explains that the shimmer is “diffracting” genes the same way it diffracts light and radio waves, I was ready to bail.

What you basically have here is a less trashy version of the movie "Species," and that's not a complement. “Species” also wasted some great actors on a ridiculous film, but at least it had all those Natasha Henstridge nude scenes. “Annihilation” could have used some of that, assuming that a better script, acting, and direction weren't an option. This film actually got a lot of good reviews, but I think it's a bore. That meteor in the opening scene is the high point.

2 stars out of 5

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) ****

Queen is one of those bands that it's easy to take for granted. Their music has been around my entire life, and even now, at any given moment, I guarantee you there's a Queen song playing on a classic rock station somewhere. I can remember my delight at discovering certain of their songs, like “Fat-Bottomed Girls” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” while other songs, like “We Will Rock You,” just feel like they have always been out there in the background somewhere.

A music biopic is a great way to showcase an old artist's music and get you to take a new look at it, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” is one of the best I have seen. Much like 1991's “The Doors,” the film gives us access to moments of creation for songs that are so ubiquitous that we may have assumed they always existed.

The film starts with Freddie Mercury fortuitously meeting guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor right after they lost the lead singer of their struggling band. Impressed with his voice, they offer Freddy a spot, and the rest, as they say, is history. Re-dubbed “Queen,” after Her Royal Majesty, the band slowly worked its way to the top with its unique, operatic, rock stylings.

As much as the music, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is about Freddie Mercury, presenting his life as a constant struggle against loneliness and isolation. He was the child of Farsi Zoroastrians from Zanzibar. His people were a religious minority chased out of Iran by the Muslims, so there is basically nowhere on earth where Mercury could truly fit in. Growing up in England, people simply called him a “Paki.” Later in his life, his homosexuality made him an outsider.

Speaking of Mercury's sexuality, there has been some bitching among the chattering class that the film glosses over his gayness or is homophobic in some way. I'm not sure what movie they were watching. For most of the film, Mercury is as openly gay as any artist was allowed to be in the 1970s and 80s, and the movie concludes with him entering into a relationship with his long-term partner Jim Hutton. I guess you just can't satisfy people who are obsessed with identity politics.

For the rest of us, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a true delight, reintroducing great music and great musicians. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll bang your head!

4 stars out of 5

Blackkklansman (2018) ****

Director Spike Lee has never been known for subtlety, and he isn't about to start being subtle now, in his story of Ron Stalworth, the real-life black cop who infiltrated the KKK. Based on Stalworth's book, “Black Klansman,” Lee's film is as bold and in-your-face as any of his work, and, in case you wondered, Lee does change the story quite a bit for dramatic effect.

In real life, Stalworth (played by John David Washington), the first black officer on the Colorado Springs police force, responded to a recruiting ad for the local Ku Klux Klan chapter. Using his “whitest” voice, he spouted racist rhetoric about blacks and Jews, and ingratiated himself with the chapter president. He then got a white officer to pose as Ron Stalworth to meet and join the group. The two gathered intelligence on the Klan, including the involvement of several active military personnel. They also became quite friendly with National Grand Wizard David Duke, much to his eventual embarrassment.

It's a great story, and Spike Lee gussies it up with some dramatic flourishes, including a bomb plot, and making Stalworth's partner (Adam Driver) Jewish. Like I said, Lee isn't known for his subtlety. Fortunately, the stellar cast is good enough to make up for most of the film's excesses. Washington (son of Denzel) and Driver are funny and convincing. Laura Harrier, who plays Stalworth's love interest, is cute as a button, and Topher Grace plays a spot-on David Duke. The best performance, however, may come from Jasper Paakkonen, who is absolutely chilling as a Klansman who is suspicious of Stalworth, adding some menace to the operation.

It's always hard for me to tell if Spike Lee understands that race relations are a two-way street, if he is just suspicious of whites and sympathetic to blacks, or a little of both. The film includes a long speech by Kwame Ture, who warns his young, black audience that a race war is coming, mirroring the race-war talk of the Klan members. Ture encourages violence against “racist, white cops,” and the film includes examples of abusive policemen who make it easy to sympathize with that stance. You get the feeling, though, that Ture wouldn't mind much if his audience just used “cops” as shorthand, or maybe even “whites.” Later, Harry Belafonte appears as activist Jerome Turner, describing a horrific lynching to a group of black students, and his talk ends with chants of “Black Power” intercut with scenes of Klansmen chanting “White Power.” Is Lee suggesting that black radicals and white radicals have some things in common? It doesn't seem characteristic of Lee, but seeing these scenes juxtaposed makes me wonder.

Then again, Lee finishes up the movie with footage of the 2017 Charlottesville, VA riots, including the deadly car attack, making it pretty clear where his sympathies lie. For me, the overt political message turns this from a 5-star film to a 4-star one. The music, costumes, script, and performances are stellar, but the sermonizing undermines the outstanding source material. Given a great story like Ron Stalworth's, Lee could have made a shorter, better, more powerful movie, and the racial message would have spoken for itself.

4 stars out of 5

The Fighter (2010) ****1/2

This is another awards-season film from several years ago that I let slip by me. My mistake. David O. Russell's “The Fighter” is a boxing classic on par with “Rocky.” The film is based on the life of welterweight boxer “Irish Micky” Ward, but if, like me, you aren't familiar with Ward's career, I would suggest watching the movie before reading anything about him.

The film tells the story of Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his half-brother Dicky Eklund. Dicky (Christian Bale) is also a boxer, a local legend known for having once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. Dicky is a mess now, a skinny crack addict with bad teeth. He is supposed to be helping his brother train, but he is completely unreliable. Ward doesn't fare much better with his manager, his mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), who seems mostly interested in getting what she can for herself and Dicky out of Ward's fights.

Ward is on a string of losses, partly due to poor management and training, when he meets Charlene (Amy Adams), a bartender and college dropout. Alice and Ward's sisters immediately dislike Charlene, partly because she is just slightly classier and smarter than them, mostly because she threatens their control over him and his career. Under Charlene's influence, Ward starts to realize that what his family wants may not be what's best for him.

I don't want to give away any more of the story. It's too good. I don't know how much poetic license Russell took with Ward's life, but he crafted one hell of a story. Christian Bale is an amazing actor, unafraid to transform his body for a role. With his skeletal face and bad teeth, he looks as much the crackhead as Pookie from "New Jack City."  Mark Wahlberg is no Tom Hanks, but he uses his limited acting range well. Melissa Leo won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for this role, although it's a bit tougher to appreciate her largely unsympathetic character.

It's a great cast telling a great story about working-class dreams. Comparisons to “Rocky” are inevitable. Both films tell the story of a boxer fighting his way up from the bottom with the help of a good woman. “Rocky” has the more rousing narrative arc, while “The Fighter” is more realistic, which makes sense given that the latter film is based on a true story. It's amazing how satisfying a story Russell creates without straying too far from the facts. “The Fighter” should join films like “Rocky” and “Raging Bull” in the pantheon of great boxing movies.

4.5 stars out of 5

The Wild Bunch (1969) ****

It took me a little while to get into Sam Peckinpah's gritty, Western classic. This tale of aging outlaws trying for one last score doesn't immediately provide you with anyone to root for. The outlaws are not your Butch and Sundance kind of gentleman robbers. Pike Bishop (William Holden), Dutch (Ernest Borgnine), and their gang are mostly crude, callous, and bloodthirsty. Some of the gang are racist towards Angel (Jaime Sanchez), the Mexican member of the crew, and suggest double-crossing him. When an injured gang-member can't ride, they give him a quick death and ride on. These men do have a code of sorts, but they abandon it, and each other, when it suits them.

The men assigned to catch these outlaws are no better. A bunch of filthy, greedy bounty-hunters, they carelessly engage in a gunfight while the outlaws are surrounded by innocent bystanders, slaughtering more townspeople than robbers. When the fight is over, their only concern is to claim bounties and pick over the bodies for loot. The only decent one among them is Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), a former outlaw who has agreed to hunt his former partners in exchange for parole.

As the movie went on, though, I began to appreciate these characters, with all their flaws, and to see why the film is considered a classic. The flaws in these characters translate into an unusual level of realism for films in the sixties and even today. It's fun to watch outlaws like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but real train robbers were probably socially maladjusted, unreliable, racist killers like the Wild Bunch. Real bounty hunters probably weren't much better than the outlaws they hunted, either. Both were ready to kill for money at the drop of a hat.

Time is running out for all of these men. The West is becoming less wild by the day, and they are looking down the barrel of a future that has no place for rugged gunslingers on horseback. In Mexico, the men see an actual motorcar, and on the trail they discuss the new flying machines they have heard about. In most westerns, the coming of the modern world would be treated as a sad thing, but as Sam Peckinpah presents these men, it will be hard to mourn them when they go the way of the dinosaurs.

Peckinpah also intended “The Wild Bunch” to be a commentary on the Vietnam War. In Mexico, the outlaws find themselves in the middle of a civil war that they cannot understand, much less control. When a village is plundered, you can flip a coin to decide if the attackers were government troops or Pancho Villa's revolutionaries. The outlaws are well-armed, on good horses, but in the Mexican desert, the indigenous locals can take them unawares at any time.

Having established his characters' many flaws, Peckinpah eventually gets us to root for them when they support Angel in his efforts to protect his Mexican village. We also come to like these outlaws a little through the intimate moments we spend, seeing them laugh or struggle with what conscience they have. In these moments of chit-chat and humor, “The Wild Bunch” anticipates movies like “Pulp Fiction,” where crime and action are mixed with moments of genuine conversation, where every line doesn't feel scripted. In the end, Peckinpah allows the Wild Bunch, even the worst of them, to have some honor.

“The Wild Bunch” won't charm you immediately like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (which also came out in 1969), but stick with it, and you'll see why this film deserves its reputation as one of the great Westerns.

4 stars out of 5