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Indeed, as detailed in W.K.
Theres little heroic about Peckinpahs film.
Its frontier is a place of fatalistic tragedy, not whooping triumph.
Fifty years later, it still rattles the nerves and floods the senses.
Like most films born ahead of their time,The Wild Bunchhas only grown in stature over the decades.
Thats largely because the movie isnt just blood and guts.
Theres a certain verisimilitude there.
It doesnt seem like theyre acting.
I still feel that way every time I watchThe Wild Bunch.
Strattons book is part making-of chronicle, part appreciation, part personal reminiscence.
Theres a certain guilelessness to Strattons approach.
Hes not a film critic, but a passionate and knowledgeable generalist who knows how to drill deep.
That passion is ultimately what counts in evaluatingThe Wild Bunch.
One of the less outraged among those early comment cards reads: This picture is burnt into my brain.
The movie has a tactilepungency that borders on the hallucinatory.
That film, too,packed its visceral punch with buckets of blood.
Stratton knows all about the blood and the exploding squibs that provide it.
Two years earlier,Bonnie and Clydehad elicited similarly shocked responses.The Wild Bunchtook things further.
A man is shot off his horse, and we see two children looking on.
Another man is shot, exit wound and all, and this time the children shudder.
All of this takes place within a few seconds.
Women and children arent merely onlookers; they also lie dead in the streets.
(Throughout the film, the camera has a way of finding small children in close-up.
Innocence inThe Wild Bunchisnt long for the world.)
Yet Stratton is here to remind us that theres a lot more going on than death and destruction.
For all that carnage, the film has a core of unexpected tenderness.
He deals with that explicitly inThe Wild Bunch.
The Wild Bunchis about men who dont relate to women very well, Stratton says.
Whatever kind of affection they have, they can feel really only for each other.
Theres no sexual connection, because if they want sex they go hire whores.
Of the 40 actors listed in the films end credits, 24 are Latino.
Mexican screen legend Emilio Fernandez was also a key figure.
His General Mapache is a strongman tyrant at war with Pancho Villas revolutionaries.
(Stratton says Peckinpahs friend James Coburn suggested coke as a way to counter the effects of the booze.
The Western never felt quite the same afterThe Wild Bunch.
Its still the one Western that stares down Americas bloody past and doesnt blink.
