Fantastic!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

There are three impressive set-pieces in this swan song of westerns. The first is a railroad office robbery, and the ensued gunfight, with a lot of civilians killed. The second is a train robbery and the subsequent chase. The final one is a spectacular shootout between Pike's (William Holden) gang and the Mexican troop. The third action scene is just shockingly bloody, and is perhaps the most brutal and violent one in the entire history of American cinema. The intricate, multi-angle, quick-cut editing of the film "The Wild Bunch" was groundbreaking and revolutionary at that time. And the gritty and nuanced performance of William Holden (Sunset Boulevard, The Bridge on the River Kwai) shows again that he is one of the best actors of all time.

Gratuitous: Without cause; Unnecessary The opening scene of this Peckinpah orgy of violence is twisted, amoral, and loaded with a massive amount of visual images not needed to tell the story. Every gun shot seems to hit a major artery, accompanied every time by a smacking sound effect to help drive home the point that this person's insides have been disemboweled and scattered around the street.It doesn't get better.This movie gets great reviews, but I'll be darned if I can tell why.

Yawn... It was a struggle to sit through this film - two and a half hours of nothing. The shootout is about as exciting as it gets, and even then it is incredibly dull and uninteresting.I honestly can't understand the 'classic' label that this Western has seemingly earned. I confess that I'm not a great fan of Westerns, but the others I've seen have at least been somewhat engaging - this one was just plain boring.Some people may love this sort of film, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I could have watched paint dry for two and a half hours and found it just as interesting.

Peckinpah's classic western is considered a masterpiece by many, but time has dulled the sheen a tad. It's not the equal of Once Upon a Time in the West or The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It doesn't have any scenes that pack the same kind of emotional punch. Mostly it is about epic displays of gun fire: many people in large spaces shooting each other and dying.Plot details are lost in the fracas. Why did Pike leave the young man behind at the beginning of the movie? If he did it deliberately, why did he even bring him along in the first place?I also missed seeing Pike die in the end.It is unquestionably very well made, and perfectly cast. I just didn't get much of an emotional jolt from it.