Movie review – “The Wild Bunch” (1969) *****

Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece – a cast full of boozy, grizzled actors, plenty of gunfights and boozy, lyrical interludes, action south of the border down Mexico way, most of the female characters are whores, there’s talk of honour and comrades and a shot of a baby sucking on its mother’s tit. Every action sequence is memorable, there are countless classic lines (“why not?”, “it’s not whether you give your word it’s who you give it to”, “I wish to God I was with them”). Few moments in cinema history strike the chord (in men, anyway) than the climax: Holden looking to his last drink and last women, then marching with his mates to their death. The directors cut introduced flashback footage – the film would have been better off without it.