The Wild Bunch review

 Number 286 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 1969 epic revisionist Western 'The Wild Bunch.'

Pike Bishop (William Holden) is the leader of an ageing band of cowboys who are finding their way before the outbreak of the first world war. Wishing to retire soon, they want to do one last robbery, but they are pursued savagely by a rival gang led by Pike's father partner Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan.)

The Wild Bunch takes place at the end of the cowboy era, as these rustlers and would-be outlaws try to find their way in the ever-changing world. It is a swan-song to their legacy, but I would argue it is also a swan-song to the Western genre itself.

By 1969, Leone had released his dollars-trilogy and the best days of the Western genre were behind them. Spaghetti Westerns were becoming a thing of the past. Roll on the 70's with the resurgence of the gangster genre, as well as the rise of the Vietnam war films. Coppola and Scorsese released the Godfather and Mean Streets, which were followed at the end of the decade by the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. But the Wild Bunch paid homage to the best of the genre while keeping everything grounded in a gritty realism.

These aren't the romanticised, pretty-boy cowboys of Gary Cooper in High Noon, but rather the brutal anti-hero that Eastwood played in the Dollars' trilogy. The Wild Bunch have their own code of honour, but this doesn't apply to the civillians around them who are largely seen as collateral damage. It was a nice demystification of a highly romanticised figure. The Wild Bunch were just petty crooks masquerading as honourable cowboys.

They were led by William Holden in another morally duplicitous role similar to this Oscar-winning turn in Stalag-17. But he was good as the ageing, world-weary protagonist who just wants to retire and put the world behind him.

The Wild Bunch was an intensely violent, but enjoyable affair that acted as a lovely swan-song to the Western genre.