The Wild Bunch
SAM PECKINPAH, 1969
4.5 STARS OUT OF 5
If you want to take on the traditional western and traditional wild west mythology, it's go hard and go home. If you're going to do it through film, save the speechifying, the well-planted messages, and just make it a bloodbath from which hardly anyone escapes. Show people what these huge shootouts, whore-mongering, and lawlessness is all about for real. That's how you touch those that are already in love with the idea of the western. Do it like The Wild Bunch.
I got down on some westerns this past March, the first time I had ever done much thinking about the genre. I liked what I saw, the push and pull between lawlessness and civilizing forces created some classic conflicts and showdowns as well as moral codes meant for preserving one's humanity in the midst of such chaos and cruelty. I also realized that these films do need a reality check, to be challenged, whether it's because they put themselves too far onto moral high ground or are not realistic about what a life of crime entails regardless of a person's moral code, especially when they are making a lot of decisions at gunpoint. The Wild Bunch brings the blood to bloodless westerns and says,
Now what? The "old school" gang we travel with is led by Pike (William Holden) who seems like your old John Wayne type, cool-headed, smart, and trying to maintain the code while committing atrocities. And from the incredible opening scene, we know there will be atrocities because the body count in the first twenty minutes or so is very high with only the promise of more to come. This runs parallel to children torturing scorpions by throwing them into a nest of red ants, and then, at the end, after it's really hit the fan in the city, they put the nest up into flames. Burn everything, that is the ultimate result of all this one upmanship, chest beating, and lawlessness.
Throughout the film, Pike is pursued by former partner Deke Thornton, who has been given the ultimatum by the law to pursue his partner to be hunted and killed himself. That's essentially the last we see of any truly civilizing force the rest of the film. You may think this is leading to some sort of showdown in the end, but what happens is actually far more delicious and unexpected as we seem to get closer to their eventual confrontation. Ultimately, when you do the balance sheet, you will realize that Pike got a lot more harm than reward in his most recent adventures. You must ask yourself,
For what? OF course, Thornton partially answers this for you at the end with his last decision, which is basically to say,
The post office isn't hiring me anytime soon.Pike and his gang working between America and Mexico reminds me a bit of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, where the main players there worked between the Union and Confederate armies as suited them, and the cynicism that comes with this sort of portrayal. Pike's first visit to the Mexican town of gang member Angel's birth does what seems to be the traditional western thing to idealize the town, its inhabitants, and especially its women. But when they must return, its truth is exposed - these are oppressed people, fearful of the soldiers from their own country, willing to sell-out anyone to garner favor with those with power who would otherwise harm them. Now, we start to see the reality for the prostitutes, the babies having babies, the rip-offs and the poverty, the real misery. We also see the reality of the children, who mimic and feed into the people with power that use said power for cruelty. We see kids who sell themselves, we see kids who kill, we see kids who brutalize. Whatever moral high ground Pike and his crew, including the local, Angel, would like to keep from themselves, certainly doesn't look like it's to be maintained in the future.
I totally bought the main performances, especially via William Holden and Robert Ryan as Thornton, and felt like I was on the same wavelength with this from the very start, especially with how much that scorpion and ant bit communicates. (And maybe I'm being a bit hypocritical here, but the sentience of scorpions and ants, or lack thereof, makes this less worrisome than, say, the position of the horses during certain stunts.) Both Pike and Thornton are trying to maintain their humanity and dignity through this all, but Peckinpah doesn't let them off so easily. I genuinely believe I can have room in my heart for both The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Wild Bunch, feel for Tom Doniphon, while also realizing how dangerous it can be to buy his live-by/die-by the gun approach, and finally, understand that the bloodless western and good guy codes are, indeed, things of mythology.