User Reviews

5/10. average movie. don't get whats to love about this movie. the opening was great but the rest of the movie felt sluggish.

Of course The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece in EVERYTHING it has going for it: snappy character-driven dialogue, gorgeous cinematography and music, an expansive story proving cinema’s worth as an artistic medium for the ages and action scenes to die for (pun fully intended there). The Wild Bunch may very well be one of THE perfect movies the human race has ever made in its Hundred-and-Thirty-Plus-Years of history. It is a Western accomplishment and cinematic landmark.

A Brutal, Beautiful Elegy for the WesternMy Rating: 7.8/10Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is not merely a Western; it is a seismic event in cinema history. Released in 1969, this film doesn't just tell a story—it **** a mythology. It takes the romantic, clear-cut morality of the classic Western and drags it through the dust and blood of a changing world, leaving behind a masterpiece that is as controversial and challenging as it is **** film follows an aging gang of outlaws on the Texas-Mexico border in 1913, men who are relics of a bygone era struggling to find their place in the encroaching 20th century. Led by the world-weary Pike Bishop, they are not heroes or charming anti-heroes; they are hardened, morally ambiguous men bound by a frayed code of honor. The narrative is a powerful meditation on loyalty, obsolescence, and the brutal nature of survival when your time is running **** performances are nothing short of legendary. William Holden delivers a career-defining performance as Pike, embodying the weight of past regrets with a profound, stoic gravity. He is matched by Robert Ryan as his former partner, a man haunted by his own complex motivations. The chemistry of the entire ensemble, including Ernest Borgnine and Warren Oates, is palpable, creating a believable bond of camaraderie forged in violence and desperation.What truly sets The Wild Bunch apart is its revolutionary technique. Peckinpah's direction is a masterclass in visceral filmmaking. The groundbreaking use of multi-angle editing, blending rapid-fire cuts with lyrical slow-motion, turns violence into a horrifying "ballet of death." This stylistic choice isn't for shock value alone; it forces the viewer to confront the brutal reality of conflict in a way that was unprecedented at the time and has influenced countless action films since. Complemented by Lucien Ballard's gritty, sun-scorched cinematography and Jerry Fielding's unsettling, Oscar-nominated score, the film's technical prowess is **** warned, this is not an easy film to watch. Its pacing can be deliberately slow, and its characters are deeply flawed, making them difficult to sympathize with. The film's reputation for violence is well-earned, but it is purposeful, serving as a stark commentary on the sanitized gunfights of older **** any serious cinephile, The Wild Bunch is essential viewing. It is a complex, demanding, and unforgettable piece of American cinema that functions as both a thrilling action film and a poignant eulogy for a genre and an era. A true, if brutal, work of art.

I just watched The Wild Bunch today and found myself a little perplexed. Overall, I enjoyed the film, but like many older movies, it feels somewhat dated in certain aspects. That said, its strengths—particularly in performance, cinematography, and its influence on the western genre—are **** cast delivers strong performances, with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine standing out. They seem tailor-made for Peckinpah’s brutal, unflinching world, embodying aging outlaws clinging to a violent way of life that is quickly fading. Supporting actors, including western stalwarts like Strother Martin, help bridge the gap between traditional westerns and the darker, more cynical vision Peckinpah **** its time, The Wild Bunch must have been revolutionary. Peckinpah didn’t just push boundaries—he bulldozed them, ushering American cinema into a new era of violence, moral ambiguity, and overt sexism that would become hallmarks of 1970s filmmaking. The film’s balletic bloodshed, especially in its infamous slow-motion shootouts, would go on to influence everything from The Godfather to Reservoir **** cinematography is another highlight. Peckinpah crafts a world that feels expansive yet claustrophobic, using large sets and hordes of extras to heighten the chaos. Instead of the sweeping Monument Valley vistas of a John Ford western, he fills the screen with dust, grime, and heat, making the environment feel as unforgiving as the characters themselves.Upon release, The Wild Bunch was met with controversy due to its extreme violence, shocking even in an era that had already seen Bonnie and Clyde push the envelope. Critics were divided—some saw it as a masterpiece of revisionist western filmmaking, while others condemned it as nihilistic and excessive. However, audiences responded well, and the film performed respectably at the box office. Over time, its reputation has only grown. What was once shocking is now seen as groundbreaking, and Peckinpah’s vision has been re-evaluated as one of the most important films in American cinema.While The Wild Bunch may feel dated in some respects, it remains an essential and fascinating piece of film history—a movie that not only redefined the western but also left a lasting mark on the industry as a whole.

THE WILD BUNCH feels singular in its portrayal of ruthless, cold, and brutal people murdering their way through a ruthless, cold, and brutal world. Even the children have no mercy, instead the first shot of the film shows their sick enjoyment of suffering animals. I don't wanna know how many horses they had to shoot during production. Normally, I would criticize animal cruelty in a film but here it just fits the nihilism of it all.

Amazing cowboy film with some bloody scenes and I understand how this got sensored didn't get released in some countries because holy s from the 60s. This is really bloody.A movie about adult children that is so spectacular to watch these guys who trying to figure out. What the hell to do. It feels like the end of an arrow. It is the end of a word the wast was almost at an end World War 1 was coming around the corner and then this would all be silly and childish, which it is but it's just so poetic but with likeable **** movie feels like they are characters from a different error which I think because they're using modern World War One weapons, which give it a weird feeling it's a Western movie but with new weapons and the characters live by code, but the law is finally catching up to them. They are no longer in a simple time. They are in the modern time and they have to **** is intense it is men living by a code. They said for themselves which means they are horrible pieces of s but I could not look away and it shuts so well. I didn't feel like this was an old movie it felt like a contemporary film so I really enjoyed it and with recommend it.

I'm embarrassed. The score associated with this review should be much higher, but here we are. Let me be clear, I do like "The Wild Bunch" and appreciate everything it is, with its unflinching depiction of violence paving the way for some of cinema's most impactful films and filmmakers. In fact, I'm comfortable saying that the opening and closing gunfights in this are absolutely perfect. Damn near everything between them, however, pales in comparison. I just couldn't find anything to latch on to when it came to these characters, save for maybe Ernest Borgnine's "Dutch Engstrom," probably the only stand-up guy in the whole picture. Everybody else either falls somewhere between stoic blank slate (i.e. William Holden's "Pike Bishop") or literal pile (Jaime Sanchez's "Angel). This hampers the weight of the ending, as well as everything that comes before it. Big hat-in-hand hours here, but it is what it is. Wish I liked this more.

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The best Western movie of all time. The original movie version is better than the director's cut.

“We're not gonna get rid of anybody! We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished! *We're* finished! All of us!”

The problem with this film is that a great deal of time is spent showing the protagonists laughing, drinking, and wenching, and riding horses here and there, and after ten or fifteen minutes of this it starts getting very old. The other problem, of course, is that the protagonists are all bad guys. They're not antiheros. You need to have some redeeming characteristics to qualify as an antihero. And if you're going to carry a movie you need some redeeming characteristics. Don Corleone had his family "honor." Tommy DeVito made for a funny psycho. William Holden and company are all fine actors, but their characters are dry as dust and we the audience are supposed to sympathize because they're ageing out of the outlaw business and the times they are a-changing. So never mind that they shoot up a bunch of civilians and a bunch of fellas from the US Army. Never mind that they shoot up a bunch of guys from the army of Mexico. We're supposed to go along with this. And, sorry, but I ain't buying. Sure, the bad guys do a couple of things that might be described as "nice," but there's nothing in the film to explain why these particular characters would do things like this, since gold and profit seem to be their only motivation. I wondered if my criticism of the film might be unfair because, after all, it was shot in 1969. Things were different then. But then I discovered that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was also shot in 1969, and that, as I recall, was a film about bad guys too, but a far far far more successful attempt at entertainment.

Fairly entertaining and well made western with good acting and writing. Quite good.