Art of Action: The Wild Bunch

An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score in Sam Peckinpah’s classic action-western.

By 1913, the outlaw gangs of the Old West are rapidly disappearing. Under the leadership of aging Pike Bishop (William Holden), one such gang rides into a Texas town, to rob the local railway office. Ambushed by bounty hunters led by ex-convict Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), a former member of the gang, Bishop's men escape to Mexico and to the apparent safety of a group of Mexican revolutionaries, hotly pursued by the hired guns.

Held up by esteemed director Kathryn Bigelow as a key influence on her own work, Sam Peckinpah’s film remains a brutal benchmark in action cinema and a subversive twist on the American Western.

“It's a towering achievement that grows more riveting and resonant with the years.” Peter Travers, Rolling Stone