WATCH PARTY: The Wild Bunch (1969) dir. Sam Peckinpah @ Richard Tucker Library
Details
I've heard this director and this movie brings both the violence and the attitude (by 1969 standards, perhaps?) We'll be in the meeting room with the nice big screen to the left of the entrance at Richard Tucker.
RUNTIME: 145 minutes
RATED: R for "intense, bloody violence"
SYNOPSIS: In this gritty Western classic, aging outlaw Pike Bishop (William Holden) prepares to retire after one final robbery. Joined by his gang, which includes Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) and brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson), Bishop discovers the heist is a setup orchestrated in part by his old partner, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan). As the remaining gang takes refuge in Mexican territory, Thornton trails them, resulting in fierce gunfights with plenty of casualties.
BLURBS:
"Apart from Peckinpah's simple technical control and the cut of his script, which is a knife that never slips off the bone, there is an angry quality to his mind." - Penelope Gilliat, The New Yorker
"Remains hugely impressive, both for its technical brilliance and the emotional ferocity of its themes: old age, friendship, betrayal and the struggle to retain some kind of cock-eyed code of honour in an increasingly cynical world." - Sheila Johnston, Independent (UK)
"It’s a traumatic poem of violence, with imagery as ambivalent as Goya’s. By a supreme burst of filmmaking energy, Sam Peckinpah is able to convert chaotic romanticism into exaltation; the film is perched right on the edge of incoherence, yet it’s comparable in scale and sheer poetic force to Kurosawa’s 'The Seven Samurai.'" - Pauline Kael, The New Yorker