A Tone Poem Written in Adrenaline

There are other Peckinpah films I like better. There are other Peckinpah films which are more emotionally affecting. There are other Peckinpah films which are easier to watch. There are other Peckinpah films...But this is the THE Peckinpah film for anyone who wants to know what the fuss is all about. THE WILD BUNCH is Peckinpah's most significant, influential, daring, and ferocious assault on the limits of cinema. This is one of the few movies in cinematic history which fundamentally changed the language of cinema. Violence, death, and carnage would never be treated the same way by the movies after this film. The very idea of action in films can be divided into those made before THE WILD BUNCH and those made after it. Practically every action film you will ever see is little more than a pale attempt at imitating the great original. Watch this movie, and you will see where it all began.

Beyond this, however, there is the film itself; and now that the controversy it engendered has faded into history and its slow-motion carnage has become cinematic banality, the film has begun to emerge in its own right. This is all too the good, because THE WILD BUNCH taken on its own terms is an extraordinary cinematic experience. A tone poem written in adrenaline.

THE WILD BUNCH is, as its creator expressed, essentially a film about bad men in changing times. The changing times, however, brings out the best in these bad men; and a film which begins as a high-spirited bloody romp ends as an epic, apocalyptic tragedy, as its characters choose to go out in an orgy of erotic carnage which changed the cinematic landscape forever.

Peckinpah's skills are magnificently on display in this film. Still youthful as a director, there is not a trace of maturity in this film. It is magnificently adolescent. The camera careens, the cuts flash by, the sound crashes and creaks, the music swells and dies in jagged eruptions.

There is hardly a misstep here. The script, by Peckinpah and Walon Green, is literate, historically knowledgable, and thankfully lacking in the cloying camp which typified the '60s Westerns. The photography by Lucien Ballard is sun-blasted and shadow worn, unafraid of the brutal contrasts so often avoided by today's cinematographers. Jerry Fielding's score is a masterwork, swinging between mariachi ballads and off-kilter rhythms. His music for the Bunch's final walk into immortality overlaps a drunken Spanish ballad with a pulsing snare drum in a completely different rhythm, creating a dissonance which telegraphs the apocalypse to come.

Criminally overlooked by critics obsessed with the film's violence is the quality of the cast. Ernest Borgnine, Jaime Sanchez, and Edmond O'Brien embody their characters so fully that one can hardly imagine them in another role. Emilio Fernandez gives us an indelible caricature of a Mexican general drunk with power and dissapation. Robert Ryan carefully walks the line between his characters honor and his betrayal. And William Holden - in a role rumored to be modeled on Peckinpah himself - gives the performance of his life, culminating in the moment when the sight of a young prostitute, a sleeping baby, and a dying bird finally gives him the strength to live up to his own professed ideals. He and Warren Oates are given what may be the most simple and powerful exchange in modern cinema. "Let's go." "Why not." Four words which never fail to send chills up your spine.

This film is a modern classic. It changed cinema forever. It turned its maker into a legend. It is also a very great film. Put history aside and enjoy it.

At Long last, a DVD worthy of the masterpiece

Sam Peckinpah's classic western finally got the treatment deserving of it with this special Edition DVD. For years all that was available was a disappointing movie only version of the film that you had to flip over to see the whole thing. Thankfully, this one was given the dual layer treatment and you're able to watch the whole thing with out issue, plus the improved transfer makes the film a little easier to watch, while at the same time maintaining the gritty feel of Peckinpah's original vision.
As far as the features are concerned, there's a pretty good catch of them. The commentary is quite insightful, and the three documentaries including Sam Peckinpah's West done by the western channel a couple of years ago, give more insight into the film and Peckinpah himself.
A must have for movie lovers of all kinds, as well as one of the last truly great westerns ever made.

The Blood Finally Runs Red

Many fans of this masterpiece suffered for decades with the shoddy Warner offerings. First there was the original VHS edition from the late seventies. For eighty bucks, one received a VHS in an oversized box that contained a muddy transfer which was brutally hacked, chopped, panned and scanned. And the Beta edition was not much better. Then came the disappointing laser disc editons. Yeah, we finally got a letterbox version, but the picture and sound quality really left something to be desired. All the fans rejoiced when word hit the street that a Director's cut was finally coming out on DVD. But keeping with tradition, Warner gave its fans the shaft once again with a muddy, non-anamorphic DVD edition.

Needless to say, I was pretty pessimistic when word began circulating about the latest DVD release. Of course, I immediately placed my advance order with Amazon. After all, I'd already shelled out hundreds of dollars for this movie, so what would another eighteen bucks matter?

I viewed the movie last evening with two friends who are also fans of The Wild Bunch. I played the DVD on a Denon DVD 3910, which was digitally connected to a 60" Sony Grand Wega. The moment the opening sequence began to play, we could immediately see that this was the edition we'd been waiting all these years for. It brought me back to 1969, when I saw the movie's Manhattan premiere. The colors are finally back to their correct shades, and the audio is right on track. Dialogue is crisp and can be clearly heard, even among menacing gunshots and thundering explosions (get your subwoofers ready). Jerry Fielding's wonderful music score will once again stimulate those little hairs on the back of your neck. I also found myself noticing little scenes (some only a few frames long) that I hadn't really noticed since watching the movie in the theatre. And, thanks to the higher resolution of this DVD edition, one can now see all the subtle details, such as decaying teeth or scattered raindrops falling from a threatning sky.

The extras are icing on an already delicious cake, but I can only give this DVD edition a four out of five possible stars because of the amateurish authoring job. One will see what I mean when trying to navigate through its features.

I guess fans of this epic now have only one more edition to look forward to; High Definition.

Enjoy the movie!
Peter M