The Wild Bunch - The Original Director´s Cut

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 1969, 134 min
Section: Tribute to Sam Peckinpah

Synopsis

It’s 1913 and while insurrection rocks neighbouring Mexico, a gang of bandits lead by Pike Bishop rob a bank in the small town of Starbuck. It soon emerges that the outlaws have fallen into a trap set by bounty hunters hired by the railroad. After a bloody shootout the chase is on. They flee to Mexico with Bishop’s former pal Deke Thornton and company in hot pursuit; there they are hired by bloodthirsty General Mapache to steal American weapons. But Angelo, a Mexican member of Bishop’s gang, convinces them to turn over part of the shipment to the rebel army. The truth comes out and the furious General has Angelo tortured. The increasing tension between the band and Mapache’s soldiers climaxes in a massacre, a suicide mission initiated by four desperadoes as vengeance for Angelo’s humiliating death. “If you can’t find the humanity even in your villains, you’re not doing your job as a storyteller, you’re making things too easy for yourself and your audience,” Peckinpah once claimed. His most famous film helped change the western genre but until 1995 it survived only in the producers’ shortened version. A gripping portrayal of the last days of the Wild West told through the story of four outlaws who, to avenge a friend, stand alone against over 200 Mexican soldiers. The film definitively pushed the traditional western aside to make way for one with deeper psychology, darker tones and very open violence, similar to the work of Peckinpah’s predecessor, Anthony Mann.