The Wild Bunch

Day 250 - 9/7/09 - Movie #248

BEFORE: Another late addition to the list, just bought this last week at the $5 DVD store. I know, I said I wasn't going to buy any more movies there, but I knew that Gunslinger Week was coming up. I really feel like I'm learning a lot about Westerns, I know this is another iconic one, directed by Sam Peckinpah, but that's all I know - so class is in session again.

THE PLOT: An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them.

AFTER: Did you ever have one of those days, when you've hijacked a trainload of army rifles for a rogue Mexican general, and you're being chased by the U.S. army AND a group of bounty hunters? And just as you've sent a wagonload of said rifles across a bridge, and lit the fuses to blow up the bridge, THEN the wagon gets stuck on the bridge, and you can't un-light the explosives? Man, I HATE it when that happens...

I was sort of feeling like the movie was pretty pointless, but then I figured that maybe I was just getting burned out on Westerns - I have been packing them in this holiday weekend. I held out, and I'm glad I did, because the best twists came near the end of this film - other than that, it's a long chase film, like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was.

William Holden stars, backed up by Ernest Borgnine, and HEY, it's Warren Oates again...

I still liked "The Magnificent Seven" a bit more - because that movie really got inside the head of the gunslinger, tried to explain the WHY of that lifestyle, and the moral code of the West. In this film, it's a little hard to root for the good guys when there aren't any good guys - the stars of the film are bank robbers. Which isn't necessarily a deterrent to us liking them, but at the end of the film when they start to get consciences, it turns out to have terrible repercussions.

The director's cut is on a double-sided disc. If you didn't know that and just watched Side A of the DVD, you can enjoy a happier ending - the posse has lost the trail of our heroes, and if you just don't flip the disc over, you can imagine they're in the clear...

RATING: 6 out of 10 bags of washers