The movie opens with a fabulous and bloody 15
minute shoot-out including trampled bodies, slow
motion, and all the good stuff.
Before the
shooting had started, you could see some town
kids at the side of the road torturing some ants
with some scorpions, or vice versa.
You knew you were
watching a brilliant movie when after the long
opening shoot-out the kids, pretty much
unimpressed, go back to their previous
occupation, and step the torture up a notch by
burning both, scorpions and ants.
William
Holden is Pike Bishop,
Ernest Borgnine is Dutch Engstrom,
Robert Ryan is Deke Thornton.
Director Sam
Peckinpah makes it raw and might be too strong for you.
And he's not done with you just yet. The shoot-out aftermath
provides further insight into the general flexibility of human morals.
Right next to children who are running
to a bloody corpse, yelling "Daddy, Daddy", folks are robbing the
dead and bickering over who gets to keep what.
Thornton: Harrigan,
the next time you
better plan your massacre more carefully.
Thornton's bunch ready
to go after the Wild Bunch
The Wild Bunch, 1969
Warner Brothers
Here goes Pike's posse:
Dutch referring to the
Mexican General Mapache: I hope someday
these people here will kick scum like him right into their graves.
Angel: We will. If it
takes forever!
Another one:
Angel: Would you give
guns to someone to kill your
father or your mother, or your brother? Pike: Ten thousand cuts an awful lot of family ties.
And here is part of the famous 8:42 minutes
final shoot-out:
What's true, What ain't?
Pike tells Dutch that
Pershing's got
troops spread out all along the border.
