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