The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic Revisionist Western film directed

by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert

Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The plot concerns
an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico–United States border trying to adapt
to 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.[2]

The screenplay was co-written by Peckinpah, Walon Green, and Roy N.

Sickner. The Wild Bunch was filmed in Technicolor and Panavision, 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 Sickner was nominated for a best
screenplay Oscar, 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 Library of Congress selected The Wild Bunch for preservation
in the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, and
aesthetically significant".[3] The film was ranked 80th in the American Film
Institute's 100 best American films and the 69th most thrilling film.[4] In
2008, the AFI listed 10 best films in 10 genres and ranked The Wild Bunch
as the sixth-best Western.[5][6]

Plot

In 1913 Texas, Pike Bishop, the leader of a gang of aging outlaws, is

seeking retirement after one final score: the robbery of a railroad payroll
office containing a cache of silver. The gang is ambushed by Pike's former
partner, Deke Thornton, who is leading a posse of bounty hunters hired by
corrupt railroad agent Pat Harrigan. The bloody shootout that results kills
more than half of the gang. Pike uses a serendipitous temperance union
parade to shield their getaway, and many citizens are killed in the
crossfire.

Pike rides off with the only survivors: his close friend Dutch Engstrom,
brothers Lyle and Tector Gorch, and the inexperienced Angel (a fifth man
is mercy-killed by Pike after being blinded by buckshot). They are
dismayed when the loot from the robbery turns out to be nothing more than
worthless steel washers planted by Harrigan. Needing money, the group
heads for Mexico accompanied by the cantankerous Freddie Sykes.
Crossing the Rio Grande, they take refuge that night in the rural village
where Angel was born. The village elder warns them about General
Mapache, a vicious Huertista officer in the Mexican Federal Army, who has
been stealing food and animals from local villages to support his campaign
against the forces of Pancho Villa.

Pike's gang visits the general at his headquarters in the town of Agua
Verde, hoping to find a paying job. A jealous Angel spots Teresa, his former
lover, in Mapache's arms and shoots her dead, angering the general and
nearly getting them killed before Pike defuses the situation and offers their
services. Mapache tasks the gang to steal a weapons shipment from a U.S.
Army train so that Mapache can resupply his army's dwindling stocks of
ammunition and appease Commander Mohr, his German military adviser,
who wishes to obtain samples of American armaments. The reward will be
a cache of gold coins.

Angel gives up his share of the gold to Pike in return for sending one crate
of rifles and ammunition to a band of peasant rebels opposed to Mapache.
The holdup goes largely as planned until Thornton's posse turns up on the
train the gang has robbed. The posse chases them to the Mexican border;
the robbers blow up a trestle bridge spanning the Rio Grande as they try to
cross, dumping the entire posse into the river. The bounty hunters, despite
being tired and exhausted, quickly resume their pursuit at Thornton's
urging.