The Wild Bunch

An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the “traditional” American West is disappearing around them.

• Director: Sam Peckinpah
• Genre:Action / Drama / Western
• Runtime:145 minutes

Cast

William Holden : Pike Bishop Ernest Borgnine : Dutch Engstrom Robert Ryan : Deke Thornton Edmond O’Brien : Freddie Sykes Warren Oates : Lyle Gorch

Pike Bishop (William Holden), the leader of a gang of aging outlaws, is seeking to subsidise his retirement with one final score, namely the robbery of a railroad office containing a horde of silver. The group is ambushed at the scene by Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) — Pike’s former partner — and a posse of deputized bounty hunters hired by a railroad company. This results in a bloody shootout that kills several of the gang; Pike, Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson), and Angel (Jaime Sánchez) emerge as the only survivors. With the captured loot turning out to be fake, they reunite with another remaining gang member, Freddie Sykes (Edmond O’Brien), and head for Mexico. Thornton, who was let out of prison to track down Pike and his criminal associates, pursues them in return for the promise of freedom, but he pushed hard on this by railroad detective Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker).

Pike and his companions take refuge in Angel’s old village, where the Mexican Revolution has evidently taken its toll on the people; a corrupt warlord named Mapache (Emilio Fernández), a general serving under the Mexican Federal Army, had been stealing vital food to feed his troops. Pike’s gang heads eventually to Mapache’s base town — a den of senseless debauchery — to trade horses, but once Angel spots his former girlfriend in the arms of Mapache, he shoots and kills her. To defuse the situation, Pike offers to work for Mapache, who engages him and his men for $10,000 in gold. Their task is to steal an arms shipment from a U.S. Army train travelling near the border. Mapache wants the arms shipment in order to re-supply his troops and appease his German military advisers, who wish to obtain samples of American weaponry to take home. Angel is eager to send some of the guns to his own village, and persuades Pike to let him smuggle them in exchange for his share of the gold. The heist goes as planned, but Deke and his posse are waiting for them in the train and give chase, only to be foiled again after falling into an explosive trap that sends the posse down a river. Deke, unperturbed, continues the pursuit.

The gang then devises a careful way to send the arms shipment back to Mapache without risk of betrayal; but during one of their transactions, Angel is captured, having been exposed for his theft of some of the guns. Later, with Sykes wounded and forced into hiding after another encounter with Deke’s posse, the rest of the gang decide to head back to Mapache’s base for shelter, where they find Angel being tortured. In a rare moment of conscience, they decide to rescue him. They confront Mapache, who is promptly shot after he slits Angel’s throat. The violent gun battle that follows sees Pike and his men killed, but not without a massacre of nearly the entire Mexican garrison. Read more