The Wild Bunch

I have to admit, I'm not quite sure what to make of this flick. It is revered as a deconstruction of Western movies, but I found little in its content that really cuts to the core of what the old oaters were about and how they needed to be taken down a peg. Unforgiven does a much better job of that. This outing seems more interested in changing times--it did get made in times that were a-changin', after all--as embodied by the oldsters who embody the altered societal landscape, all of which has some interesting notes but is hardly the foundation of an all-time classic. There's also weirdness in the occasional scenes of the gang members going off on extended laughing jags, which I guess are supposed to exemplify how 'wild' they are, but mostly just comes across as disjointed oddness. (Given the film's '60s provenance, those scenes also come across as everyone being high, which may have been purposeful, too.) In a lot of ways, the story arc of Robert Ryan's character, a former fellow traveler of the bunch, is more interesting than the story of anyone in particular who is still in the gang. Nevertheless, judged simply as a Western story, the movie mostly works, with good action in several memorable scenes, and most of the principal actors acquit themselves well. I just think, looked at soberly through the lens of time, this film is not really the sensation it was viewed to be when it first arrived.