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Define porthole5/24/2023 This pursuit gradually turns to vengeance as their own violence begins to be dwarfed by the level of cruelty displayed by the Mexican commander and his troops towards the simple people caught up in the conflict. The c ast of characters, led by William Holden, with his second in command, Ernest Borgnine, along with Robert Ryan, Warren Oats, Edmond O'brien and others weave a tale of death and violence through South Texas and Civil War torn Mexico, all for the pursuit of gold. Army in the Spanish American War, but now were nothing more than mercenaries for profit. Enter the "wild bunch" a gang of 1912 ex-military men who had fought the good fight for the U.S. Director Sam Peckinpah stuck his head through the porthole of time and produced a movie with a level of violence and malevolence wrapped around a time in the Mexican Revolution when life was cheap and gold was available to those cruel enough to do anything. This is perhaps a unique genre with some possible similarity to an earlier film, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. If you never had the opportunity to see this film, you clearly have missed what is probably the best western/action/war/gang type movie ever made. If there were a 10-star rating, this action/western would certainly warrant at least eight stars. The Wild Bunch (DVD, 1997, Restored Director's Cut) Instead of appreciating the film as a critique of brutal violence, many critics responded by rejecting what they saw as a superfluous spectacle of dead bodies. ![]() The film brought issues of violence and morality in movies to the forefront of American film criticism. Peckinpah brilliantly used aging Western stars such as Ryan and Holden to convey this passing of the cinematic torch. Along with BONNIE AND CLYDE, it ushered in a new breed of Hollywood film, depicting a harsh reality where lines between right and wrong became blurred. William Holden, Robert Ryan, and Ernest Borgnine star as the leaders of a grizzled crew of Texan bandits who ride to Mexico, where, one by one, they are unceremoniously slaughtered by a Mexican revolutionary.The western, a genre steeped in legend and the concept of loyalty, was a dying breed when Sam Peckinpah unleashed this amoral and violent opus. As a counterpoint to the heroic horde of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, the aging gunmen of Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece break the very laws of honor which bind them in this bloody and meditative tale of the American West-widely considered to be the self-conscious nail in the coffin of the genre.
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