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The Wild Bunch

Posted by afilado (A) on January 25, 2008 at 15:44:16

Will somebody remind me why this is held in high regard? I have seen it before - several times over the years - in original theater cut and remember admiring it.

Having just finished the director's cut I find it quite dated, even in the context of that period of western filmmaking. It is a stilted script, of many cliches and incongruence. It is filled with an incredibly racist, sexist portrayal of Mexican stereotypes. And it is flippant in dramatizing the realities of the hardships of that time and that place. It's message about the noble savage v. civilization now seems clumsy, heavy-handed.

There is the ramped-up standard of violence. There are some enjoyable, mostly over-the-top individual performances - Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Edmond O'Brien. But that is not enough to save it for me. The lead characters, excepting the reserved intensity of Robert Ryan, are virtual caricatures, of false dimension, especially Borgnine and Holden.

I love westerns but I'm sorry to say that this hasn't aged well for me.

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