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Tarfumes.com - The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $14.99
Your Save: $ 4.99 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Alfonso Arau, Ernest Borgnine, Elsa Cárdenas, Albert Dekker, Emilio Fernández
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 9781419810763
Format: AC-3
ISBN: 1419810766
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2006-01-10
Running Time: 145
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1969
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Editorial Reviews:
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Outlaws on the Mexican-U.S. frontier face the march of progress the Mexican army and a gang of bounty hunters led by a former member while they plan a robbery of a U.S. army train. No one is innocent in this gritty tale of of desperation against changing times. Pump shotguns machine guns and automobiles mix with horses and winchesters in this ultraviolent western.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:Â ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating:Â R UPC:Â 012569705937 Manufacturer No:Â 70593
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wild Bunch
Comment: Saw this movie back in the 70's and have loved it ever since. Peckinpah excels here as do the actors and their performances. Holdens character is the most memorable
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Comment: Director Sam Peckinpah's two hour and twenty-five minute long 1969 Western classic, The Wild Bunch, is certainly an influential and important film, but, compared to the other great Western released that year, Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West, it has not held up nearly as well. There are several reasons for this fact, and by making that statement I am not stating that Peckinpah's film is in any way a bad film. No. It's merely a good film that has been passed by later films, and lacks the depth Leone's film still does. Part of the reason is that Leone's film is far more stylized and revolutionary. No, that film is not nearly as violent as Peckinpah's, and it is the violence of The Wild Bunch (and occasionally claims of its mainstreaming slow motion cinematography mixed with quick cutting) that is usually the lynchpin to arguments for its revolutionary status, not its more straightforward and derivative storytelling; although the earlier Bonnie And Clyde, by director Arthur Penn, deserves more of the credit (or blame) for mainstreaming over the top and slow motion violence.
Compare the openings of the two films. In Peckinpah's film there is the great opening montage where the heroes/villains are introduced, and then the action is frozen into a black and white image. We see children sadistically dropping scorpions on to red anthills, then setting the wee creatures ablaze. Then we see the heroes, dressed as good guy American soldiers become vicious killers as they rob a bank, then get in a shootout with bounty hunters during a Temperance March. Leone's film shows almost nothing happen for the same amount of time. We see a train station captured, and wait. This is visual poesy. Peckinpah's is prose, albeit with tweaks.
Now consider the two leading men used as psychopathic killers. In Peckinpah's film it's William Holden, a second level leading man. But in Leone's film it's Henry Fonda- one of Hollywood's towering filmic giants of American decency. Leone's choice is far more fundamentally disturbing. Then there is the actual storylines of the films. For all the claims of upsetting the apple cart, Peckinpah's tale is punctuated with numerous poorly scripted scenes. There are numerous moments where the characters in the gang simply do not speak realistically, and where they force laughter, like at the end of a bad tv sitcom- there's the scene with the sauna, with the whores, the scene where Angel's villagers steal weapons from the gang, and others. Leone has no such moments, and although there is less actual violence in Leone's films, there is nothing within Peckinpah's film as primally shocking nor disconcerting as watching Fonda's character murder the whole McBain clan.... Despite its reputation, this overrated film gives no real insight into either the Old West nor the human condition, and certainly nothing new. Too much of it, especially in interior stage shots, and in some of the dialogue and forced laughter between the gang members, feels like refried Bonanza, or other banal tv Westerns of the era, whereas Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West was wholly original. Peckinpah's film is a good, but not great, film, even if it is an enjoyable diversion for an afternoon, and was certainly influential- just look at the final shot of Lyle Gorch at the machine gun and there is an almost identical pose struck by James Franciscus at the end of Beneath The Planet Of the Apes, released a year later. If one goes into this film fresh, it will be an enjoyable film, a cut above the simpleminded John Wayne tripe that dominated the silver screen for the three decades prior, but if one expects a true masterpiece, disappointment is bound to follow. Choose ignorance....you know how the rest of that saying goes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Look At What "Bonnie and Clyde" Did!
Comment: This Original Director's Cut version of "The Wild Bunch" is a real treat as they did an excellent job with the restoration and especially with the sound quality as the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound is excellent although despite heroic attempts at picture quality restoration, there are many white spots and other imperfections in a number of frames. Hopefully the Blu-ray version took the opportunity to clean these up.
This is a good adventure flick although I do call its originality into question when quite obviously this film borrows from a number of other films that shortly preceded it. For the violence that begins and ends the movie see "Bonnie and Clyde"; for the theme of outlaws becoming obsolete and hence wanting to make that one big job and then "retiring" see "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". See the same for the use of a modern sounding soundtrack for an anachronistic effect as at some points the score reminded me of an old 70s police drama effect, frontal nudity "The Graduate" etc.
However, just because this film borrowed heavily from themes that were originally shown by films that just preceded it doesn't make this in any way a bad film but it does in my mind put some perspective into it and hopefully remove some of the hype that accompanies it. Although a good western, this is certainly not the best ever; for that you'll need to watch "Unforgiven" and even "High Noon" and "Butch Cassidy ... Kid" not to mention "Stagecoach" are a lot better than this.
William Holden and Robert Ryan also seem miscast for this as I just couldn't see them as the down and dirty outlaws that they were supposed to be as they just seemed too decent. They looked so out of place during the flashback scene in the whorehouse and somehow when trying to explain the gash in his leg, Holden's character while describing his adulterous ways almost made me laugh it was so hard to believe. The others though were excellently cast although Ben Johnson's first scene when he blatantly tries to copy the Walter Huston mad outburst scene from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" I found stupid and unnecessarily plagiaristic.
Overall a good adventure film but it copies too much from prior films of the time to be a great classic for me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Wild Bunch
Comment: Bought this for my husband and he really enjoyed it. Just his kind of movie.The movie got here within a few days after I ordered it.We are very pleased. I would highly recommend buying DVDs from Amazon. Excellent to deal with.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Warner Brothers need to release the Uncut Version for the full artistic effect of the movie!
Comment: I took a college course in 1979 named "Film as Literature" and "The Wild Bunch" was one of the premier films that we studied. But the version that we saw was the "uncut" version - not the shorter so-called "director's cut" version. The purposefulness of the original longer version brings into focus the very meaningful look of the purposes of violence and that sometimes the violent have a purpose, and sometimes those that oppose the violent actually have less of a purpose and cause much more damage (witness our present political situations in the world...)
In the name of satisfying the full artistic measure of this great film the full uncut version needs to be released. Shame on them for hacking this film - like taking an airbrush to the Sistine Chapel.
I feel privileged to have seen the full version as the artists intended!
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