The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Delivery Time: 7 to 15 Working Days Format: DVD

Outlaws on the Mexican-U.S. frontier face the march of progress, the Mexican army and a gang of bounty hunters led by a former member while they plan a robbery of a U.S. army train. No one is innocent in this gritty tale of of desperation against changing times. Pump shotguns, machine guns and automobiles mix with horses and winchesters in this ultraviolent western.
One of the best action movies ever made, in a cleaned-up print restoring crucial parts of the story. No cavalry ever rode in with more epochal impact than the Wild Bunch in the legendary opening scene. Their steel-eyed leader, Pike (William Holden), and his robbers in stolen army uniforms help an old lady across the street, and then spark a massacre led by Pike's old crony Thornton (Robert Ryan), sprung from jail to hunt down his old gang. In just a few minutes, Sam Peckinpah sets the scene--a dusty Texas town in 1913--sketches a dozen vividly individualized characters, and choreographs one of the most realistic, influential, brilliantly photographed shootouts under the pitiless sun. The cast is superb (even Ernest Borgnine!), the dialog crackling, the bitterly ambiguous moral of the story hard-earned. It's the deeper, dark flip side to 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Consider buying the letterbox Wild Bunch, the review collection Doing It Right, and the Peckinpah bio "If They Move... Kill 'Em!" --Tim Appelo