I’m not a Sam Peckinpah fan. While I don’t think that his pessimistic view of the world as a randomly and casually violent and brutal place isn’t necessarily wrong, I think that it isn’t the whole picture, and after seeing Straw Dogs, his view of female sexuality is problematic though not necessarily misogynistic. Peckinpah’s characters are notoriously short on empathy, but big on hypocrisy-condemning actions by others that the character has already engaged in. The Wild Bunch continues in the grand Peckinpah tradition. Even the usually genial Ernest Borgnine plays an unsentimental outlaw in The Wild Bunch.
The Wild Bunch is about a band of outlaws looking for a big payday so some of the older members can stop living a life on the run from those they rob and the authorities led by a former member. (Dear criminals, please watch movies or tv shows. There is never one last run or retirement.) They take a job from a character more unsavory than they are, become traitors to their homeland by agreeing to steal for him and then hit a crossroads of whether or not to adhere to the criminal code of conduct and face certain doom or hit the road and live.
The Wild Bunch does not consist of likable criminals. They are bad friends, thieves of even the poorest individual, rapists and murderers. The Wild Bunch seems to suggest that the entire game is rigged from the opening scenes-they are the scorpions, and their most recent employer and his men are the ants, but ultimately they will all go up in flames. I saw the director’s cut, which is longer, includes some flashbacks to explain characters’ motivations and makes them slightly more sympathetic, but even with these added scenes and the dated gore, The Wild Bunch makes Quentin Tarantino’s work seem optimistic and humorous.
I don’t need happy endings, but Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch suggests that the world is hell and devoid of any joy or beauty so while it is a classic and a must see for hard core moviegoers interested in film history, I would not recommend such a nihilistic venture.