I keep adding films to my watch list due to their reputation but that doesn’t always mean that I’ll end up liking them. This epic Western film is considered one of the greatest American films of all time but I struggled for a long time to understand why. It has decent gunfight scenes and a complicated story and that seemed to be it. Later I realized that it has a very cynical take on the genre and that are really no good people in it on any side. I had to read up on it to understand that it’s a response to the Vietnam War and director Sam Peckinpah wanted to show audiences what he felt was the grim reality of real violence. As he later discovered, he failed because it turns out that there is no violence, no matter how horrific or graphic, that we humans won’t glorify and get excited over.

Pike Bishop leads his gang of outlaws into a town in Texas, disguised as US Army soldiers, to rob a railroad payroll office. But the company has set a trap for them and positioned bounty hunters to ambush them, led by Deke Thornton, a former member of Pike’s gang. Many of the gang members are killed in the shootout along with innocent bystanders but Pike survives along with a close buddy Dutch and a few others. After learning that the loot they stole is worthless, they flee across the border to Mexico and take refuge in the village of their Mexican member, Angel. They hear about the General Mapache who is fighting against revolutionaries. The next day they head to the town where the general is based with his forces. When Angel sees his former lover Teresa cavorting with the general, he shoots her dead in a fit of anger. The rest of the gang are able to stop the fight from escalating and the general, together with a German military advisor, offers them a job. They are to rob a shipment of weapons being transported by the US Army in exchange for gold. Meanwhile Thornton and the posse of bounty hunters continue to pursue them.

The gun violence in this film is certainly brutal and it doesn’t shy away from showing ordinary American townsfolk being collateral damage. I found it fascinating that it shows so much of life on the Mexican side of the border as Angel’s village warmly welcomes the gang. Yet it mostly felt like just another Western film to me, albeit one with great action shots and an amoral outlook. I thought that the direction was only mediocre and I dislike the awkward way it uses flashbacks. It took too long for me to take in all the clues to understand what the director is going for. We can see that Pike’s gang are evil bastards and even their loyalty to each other tenuous. Yet the bounty hunters led by Thornton are an even worse lot, motivated solely by greed and dumb as rocks. Then there are the signs that this takes place at arguably the tail end of the era of the cowboy. Pike and Dutch talk about how it’s time to retire with General Mapache’s automobile symbolizing the end of the dominance of horses. The presence of German officers in Mexico intent on sabotaging the interests of the United States is also instructive as is the appearance of a machine gun.

So in a somewhat roundabout way, this was meant as an allegory of the Vietnam War and the frustrations of Americans against an unjust war. Unbridled bloodlust and violence driving men mad explain some of the more asinine decisions made by Pike’s gang. It’s also why the film goes out of its way to show the goriness of deaths and injuries, especially among bystanders. Unfortunately while this might have been ahead of its time, it has since been upstaged by later films that reference the Vietnam War directly. The wild rampages of the gang’s members are accompanied by an exhilarating joy for combat that rather detracts from this as being a condemnation of violence. Peckinpah was reported to be upset when audiences was thrilled by the bloodshed rather than horrified. Other filmmakers have since learned from this episode and now know not to include battle scenes in films that are meant to be anti-war. It doesn’t help either that while the gunfights are competently shot, the rest of the film seem only mediocre to me. For example, I really dislike how they use awkward flashbacks to tell the characters’ backstories.

I found the film plain and underwhelming at first glance. Reading up on it, I could understand why it has the reputation it has but it wasn’t enough to make me actually like it. It’s enjoyable enough as an action movie, but as with the anti-war theme, there are better choices out there to watch.