The Wild Bunch (1969)

A landmark film in many respects, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch was considered controversial not only because of its extreme, now legendary, slow-motion violence, but also because of the war started between the producer, Phil Feldman, and the director.

Synopsis: The film is set in Texas in 1913, as progress, old age, and the onset of World War I are killing off the Old West and its outlaws. While children sit on the outskirts of the small town of San Rafael and play a game in which hundreds of red ants consume a scorpion, a group of men in Army uniforms rides by. Bank robbery The men enter the town and go to the bank. Before the clerk has a chance to ask what the men want, their leader, Pike Bishop (William Holden), pulls the man out of his chair and pushes him across the room. The rest of the men brandish their weapons before the patrons inside. Pike glances around to make sure all is secure. It is. He utters a simple, deadly command, "If they move—kill 'em." The "soldiers" are actually bank robbers. Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), Lyle Gorch (Warren Oates), Crazy Lee (Bo Hopkins), and Angel (Jaime Sanchez) are dressed as cavalry; the rest of the gang is positioned throughout the town on the lookout for anything suspicious.

Ambush Once the dozens of heavy canvas bags filled with gold have been packed up, the bunch prepares to leave. The men stop dead in their tracks when Angel observes three rifles on the rooftop across the street. Members of the gang who are stationed outside have noticed them as well, and it becomes apparent to all that they have been trapped in an ambush. Pike quickly decides to make a run for it and uses a Temperance Union parade for cover. As a brief diversion, Pike kicks the bank manager out of the building, and the man is immediately blasted to bits by the overzealous bounty hunters. A horrible gunfight ensues between the bunch and the bounty hunters—with innocent men, women, and children taking most of the bullets. During the battle Pike sees that one of the posse is Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), an old friend. Deke raises his rifle to shoot Pike. Pike draws his pistol. Both men lose their nerve and aim for targets nearby, sparing each other's lives.

After losing several men in the battle, Pike is able to gather his forces and escape. Those left of the bunch—Pike, Dutch, brothers Lyle and Tector Gorch (Oates and Ben Johnson), and Angel—ride to their hideout in Mexico, where the grizzled old desert rat Sykes (Edmond O'Brien) waits with fresh horses. When the men cut open the loot, they are shocked to discover that the canvas bags are filled with worthless metal washers. This nearly demolishes the delicate balance of the group, Lyle and Tector seriously questioning Pike's judgment. Realizing that the whole thing has been a setup by Pike's archenemy, railroad baron Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker), the leader of the bunch informs his old friend Sykes that Deke was among the bounty hunters who participated. Sykes is surprised and saddened by the news—the three used to ride together—and the men decide to travel to Angel's village for a rest.

Meanwhile, Deke argues with Pat about the ill-planned ambush that resulted in many bystanders' deaths. Bemoaning his being saddled with worthless, trigger-happy morons (the sleazy bounty hunters are picking over the corpses like vultures), Deke demands better men. Pat, relishing the power he holds over Deke (he got Deke out of prison to help track Pike), gleefully informs the man that he must make do with what he has. He then announces that if any of them tries to get away (a not-so-veiled reference to Deke), he'll pay a bounty to the man who kills the escapee. With that, the bounty hunters take off after the bunch. Respectful citizens In Angel's village, Pike's gang is afforded wary respect by the locals. The village elder Don Jose (Chano Urueta) tells the group that Mexico is in the throes of a civil war. A ruthless army general, Mapache (Emilio Fernandez), has recently invaded the village, killed all the young men, and made off with Angel's not-unwilling girlfriend. Angel wants to ride off and bring back the girl, but Pike forbids it. Having gained the respect of the people (who see the men as saviors who will deliver them from the hands of Mapache), the wild bunch, unaccustomed to such adulation, rides out of the village.

Tthe bunch decides to visit Mapache's compound, knowing that the bounty hunters won't dare follow. Suddenly a horn sounds, and the startled outlaws turn to see a bright red automobile carrying the general through the gate. Most of the men have never seen a car and are both scared and fascinated by it. By chance, Angel sees his girlfriend happily presenting a pony to Mapache. Overcome with rage, the impetuous Angel shoots his beloved while she is in the arms of Mapache. This sudden outburst of violence startles everyone, and the outlaws immediately raise their hands to avoid annihilation by Mapache's troops. The trick works, and the men are spared, although Angel is taken away and beaten. Gun robbery Mapache, who is being manipulated by a pair of German advisors, asks the bunch inside for a drink. There the Germans propose that the bunch rob a U.S. Army shipment of guns for the general. Once the price has been agreed upon and Angel has been returned to them, the bunch rides off to execute the robbery. The train robbery goes off without a hitch until Deke, his men, and a trainload of incompetent cavalry soldiers enter the fray. Anticipating just such an eventuality, Pike has laced the main bridge across the Rio Grande with a ton of dynamite, so Deke and his men are blown into the river.

The haul, which includes a machine gun, is tremendous—and Pike agrees to let Angel take a few cases of rifles for his people back in the village. Eventually word of this deception leaks out; and when Angel and Dutch ride into the general's fortress to collect their share of the loot, Mapache has the young Mexican captured and tortured. Obviously outnumbered, Dutch feigns ignorance of the "thievery" and rides back to the bunch, where he pleads with the gang to rescue the boy. Pike rejects the idea, but he changes his mind when he sees that Deke and his men are hot on their trail—and have shot and seriously wounded Sykes.

Back at Mapache's stronghold a wild celebration over the guns is taking place. When they arrive, the remaining members of the bunch—Pike, Dutch, Lyle, and Tector—are greeted by the sick sight of Angel being dragged around in the dirt, tied to the back of Mapache's car. Swallowing the urge to shoot it out, the men accept the general's invitation to join the party, and they all seek solace in the company of whores save Dutch, who waits outside. Turning point Disgusted with himself, his life, and the recent turn of events, Pike decides to get it over with. He enters another part of the whorehouse, where Lyle and Tector are dickering with a prostitute over price. Pike looks Lyle right in the eye with a steely determination and says, "Let's go." Lyle looks first at his brother and then at Pike, and responds gamely, "Why not?" The men gather their gear and meet Dutch outside. Gratified that a courageous decision has been reached, Dutch arms himself to the teeth. The four men, laden with every gun they can carry, march across town to where Mapache is holding court, the new machine gun proudly displayed on a table.

The drunken soldiers demand to know what the four want. Pike calmly states that they want the return of Angel. Mapache smiles and agrees. He walks a near-dead Angel over to the men, cuts the bonds that tie his arms, and then sadistically slits the boy's throat. Pike immediately pulls his pistol and shoots Mapache, as does Dutch.

The drunken troops stagger to their feet and reach for their weapons, but the bunch has actually managed to get the drop on hundreds of men. The silent standoff is almost painful. As the men whirl around, expecting an attack, not a soldier moves. Tector and Dutch laugh at the thought that they may actually get away. Dutch smiles encouragingly at Pike, as if trying to convince his partner that they have won. Pike knows better. It is time to die. Last gun battle Choosing one of the German advisors as his next target, Pike takes deliberate aim and kills the man. This time all hell breaks loose, and the fortress erupts into an orgy of violence. The bunch eventually takes control of the machine gun, with which hundreds of Mapache's troops are slaughtered. After a long and brutal fight, the members of the gang begin to succumb—first Lyle and Tector and then Pike, shot in the back by a child who can barely carry his gun. Dutch stumbles to his friend's aid, but it is too late. He too is gunned down, and the men die side by side, Pike's hand still clutching the trigger of the machine gun. Bounty hunters' rewards With Mapache's troops wiped out, Deke and his bounty hunters ride into town. The men pick over the bodies with glee, but Deke looks sadly at the corpse of his fallen friend, seemingly in regret that he has not gone down the same way rather than sell out to the railroad. While his men are grabbing rifles and boots, Deke claims one trophy for himself, Pike's pistol. Hours later, with the remnants of the town leaving with what they can carry, Deke tells his men he does not intend to return to the States with them. They shrug it off and ride into the distance, the bodies of the wild bunch slung face down over their saddles.

Deke sits alone, as the wind blows dust around him. In the distance a brief gunfight is heard, and Deke smiles in the knowledge that the bounty hunters haven't gotten very far. Moments later Sykes, the elder from Angel's village, and a few other men armed with the guns Pike gave them ride up. Sykes tells Deke, "Me and the boys here got a job to do. Wanna come along? It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do." Deke chuckles, mounts his horse, and rides off with Sykes and his men.

Critique: Hatchet cutting job As with the majority of Peckinpah's work, the studios and producers hacked the film apart to suit their needs (to cut its length, to eliminate controversy, to prove their power over the ever-difficult Peckinpah) and distributed a film vastly different from the one the director had originally envisioned. The hatchet job on the film occurred while Peckinpah was on vacation in Hawaii, after his film had been shown uncut to reviewers on the East Coast. (Critic Vincent Canby expressed dismay when he went to see the film again and discovered scenes missing, but his protests were dismissed by Phil Feldman—who, in a stunning piece of logic, declared that if the critic had not seen the missing scenes originally, he wouldn't have missed them). Adverse reaction to the film did not spur Feldman to make the cuts (all the trimmed scenes contained important motivational information vital to the portrayals of the main characters, especially Willam Holden's, and none were particularly violent). They were made mainly to bring the film's running time down to two hours so that theater owners would be able to cram in another show and sell more popcorn. Leader's self-doubts

Although The Wild Bunch is an incredibly violent film, it is also an honest one. Peckinpah's characters are bad, brutal men, and no effort is made to soften their crimes. What separates them from the bounty hunters, Pat, the railroad man, and "civilized" society is their sense of honor and commitment to themselves. Pike's character is not just a mindless killer; he is an insecure man, saddled with a mighty reputation but wracked with doubt and self-loathing. Pike is getting old and making ill-advised, thoughtless decisions that jeopardize the lives of those he is closest to. It is here that the mindless cuts by producer Feldman hurt the film most. Nearly every scene excised deals with Pike's guilt over his leadership (and all have finally been restored to the film in a new videotape release). The first scene details how Pike's overconfidence resulted in Robert Ryan's being captured by the law. While Deke is hauled off to jail, it is Pike who escapes. The second scene is a brief exchange in which Sykes reveals that Cracy Lee (whom Pike had forgotten about and left to die in the opening massacre) was Sykes' grandson. The old man asks whether the boy served the bunch well, and a nervous Pike says that the kid did "just fine." The third restored scene shows the origin of Pike's painful leg wound. When he was younger, Pike had an affair with a married woman whose husband had left her. Pike loved the woman, but his thoughtless disappearances put a strain on the relationship. One night the woman's husband returned to find the two together, killed the woman, and wounded Pike. Pike was unable to shoot back, and the man escaped with his life. Leader's motivation excised

These scenes are essential to explain Pike's motivation and subsequent actions. Pike feels that he has destroyed everything good in his life (his friendship with Deke, the love of a woman—and ultimately her life). The fiasco at San Rafael (where he thoughtlessly left one of his men behind) tends to confirm his negative view of himself. By accepting Mapache's assignment, Pike takes his one last chance to redeem himself in his own eyes and those of his men. The train robbery goes off beautifully, but once again bad decisions cause the deaths of people close to him (Angel's capture and torture, Sykes' apparently fatal wound). As the film reaches its climax, Pike has finally decided that the only way to redeem himself is to live up to his pronouncements on solidarity and friendship and to sacrifice his life for an honorable cause—he has been dead inside for years anyway.

The rest of the bunch senses its obsolescence in the brave new world of automobiles, machine guns, and airplanes, so they willingly join the final battle. Without these flashbacks showing the events that have brought Pike to this place, his character is a meaningless monster, hell-bent on destruction. His willingness to sacrifice his life rather than escape makes no sense without the explanation that the cut sequences provide. Cuts create misperception Other cuts by Feldman contributed to the perception that the film was made up of disgusting characters and mindless violence. Two important scenes that shed light on the Mapache character were also excised. The first is a large battle scene (with little blood) showing the general and his troops besieged by Pancho Villa at a train station while awaiting word that Pike and his men have obtained the guns. Standing on the train tracks while his men are dying around him, a nervous Mapache suppresses his urge to flee, for the sake of a young boy who admires him. So as not to shatter the boy's illusions, Mapache stands his ground and bravely salutes the little soldier, and together they slowly march to the safety of the train.

The second scene shows a brief aftermath to the battle with Villa, where a concerned Mapache watches intently as the wounds of his soldiers are tended to. One of his men says, "With the new guns this wouldn't have happened." Both of these scenes present Mapache as more than a cruel, heartless opportunist. He is vicious and brutal but only to those who threaten his people. The general is shown to have a genuine concern for his men and their families; without this he seems a drunken buffoon unworthy of pity, respect, or understanding. Missing human side Although Feldman's other cut is fairly minor, a bit of dancing by the bunch in Angel's village, this too shows a more human side of the characters, which is missing from the butchered version. Peckinpah never softens his perspective on these men—they are killers and thieves—but he also shows their human side. Their desires are often indefensible, their judgements are frequently unwise, but the men have human and sometimes humane qualities too.

Cast:

Performer, Character

William Holden, Pike Bishop

Ernest Borgnine, Dutch Engstrom

Robert Ryan, Deke Thornton

Edmond O'Brien, Sykes

Warren Oates, Lyle Gorch

Jaime Sanchez, Angel

Ben Johnson, Tector Gorch

Emilio Fernandez, Mapache

Strother Marti,n Coffer

L.Q. Jones, T.C.

Bo Hopkins, Crazy Lee

Production Credits:

Producer, Phil Feldman

Director, Sam Peckinpah

Screenwriters, Walon Green ANDSam Peckinpah (based on a story by Green and Roy N. Sickner)

Editor, Lou Lombardo

Cinematographer, Lucien Ballard

Composer, Jerry Fielding

Special effects, Bud Hulburd