Movie: The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch (1969 – 50-year anniversary)

Director Sam Peckinpah’s ground-shattering Western takes place in Texas and Mexico in 1913, a transitional year when the Old West was giving way to the New West, and just as the fictional West was being rewritten, Peckinpah and his clutch of legendary actors (William Holden, Robert Ryan, and Warren Oates, to name a few) were rewriting the Western, sparked by the genius of Peckinpah’s hero, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, and with far more restraint than his latter-day protégée, Quinton Tarantino. (2 hours, 15 mins)