the wild bunch , milestone film

The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah about an aging outlaw gang on the Texas–Mexico border, trying to exist in the changing "modern" world of 1913. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any available means.

The movie, whose screenplay was written by Peckinpah and Walon Green, stars William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. It was filmed in Mexico, notably at the Hacienda Ciénaga del Carmen (deep in the desert between Torreón and Saltillo, Coahuila) and on the Rio Nazas.

The Wild Bunch is noted for intricate, multi-angle, quick-cut editing, using normal and slow motion images, a revolutionary cinema technique in 1969. The writing of Green, Peckinpah, and Roy N. Sickner was nominated for a best-screenplay Academy Award, and the music by Jerry Fielding was nominated for Best Original Score. Additionally, Peckinpah was nominated for an Outstanding Directorial Achievement award by the Directors Guild of America and cinematographer Lucien Ballard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography.

In 1999, the U.S. National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the Library of Congress as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. The film was ranked 80th in the American Film Institute's 100 best American films, and the69th most thrilling film.In 2008, the AFI revealed its "10 Top 10" of the best ten films in ten genres: The Wild Bunchranked as the sixth-best WesternThe Wild Bunch symbolically marks the end of the Old West in this violent Sam Peckinpah film. Pike (William Holden) leads a renegade band of outlaws in a train robbery to supply Mexican rebels with funds to fight the government of President Huerta. Along with Dutch (Ernest Borgnine), Lyle and Tector Gorch , (Warren Oates and Ben Johnson) and Angel (Jaime Sanchez), they pull off the daring train robbery. Not only are they the target of Mexican Army troops, but a greedy railroad baron has release Thornton (Robert Ryan) from jail to hunt down his old friend Pike. Four of the gang disguise themselves as calvary men to escape with guns and money for Pancho Villas' rebels. Using a woman's temperance march for a shield, they manage to escape a sniper trap in the small village. Sykes (Edmund O'Brien) is the veteran gang member waiting with fresh hoses in his desert hideaway. The gang is frightened by the sight of a Mexican general in something they have never seen before, a big red automobile. After Angel is dragged from the back of the car and his throat is cut, the gang decides to die as legends of the Old West rather than face a strange new world of automobiles and airplanes. They kill two German advisors and the Mexican general as they are outnumbered by hordes of drunken Mexican troops. Peckinpah introduces the slow motion death scene that has become a staple of cinematic violence since its inception. Producer Phil Feldman felt the wrath of the director when he cut several scenes with out permission in this classic western. The restored version added much to develop motivation and previous history of the characters. Women are either used as human shields or ar portrayed as heartless hookers. Everyone is bad, only Pike's gang has a sliver of honor to display before staring down the barrels of hundreds of guns in the final showdown