The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch (1969) is Sam Peckinpah's western, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The year is 1913, the old frontier is fading, and six aging outlaws are running out of road along with it.

A robbery at a railroad office in a Texas border town turns out to be a setup: Pike Bishop's gang rides into an ambush staffed by bounty hunters led by his own former partner, Deke Thornton, sprung from prison on one condition, to hunt down his old friends. The only way out is across the river into a Mexico torn apart by revolution. There a looting general hires them, and one last job becomes a choice between the money and the only thing these men have left, their loyalty to each other. William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and Robert Ryan play men who were born too late for their own world.

Peckinpah cut the closing gunfight from thousands of splices and slow-motion frames, and the technique changed how movies show violence for good. The film drew two Oscar nominations and still sits near the top of every list of the greatest westerns. Stream The Wild Bunch (1969) online on iFILM.