Sam Peckinpah Film The Wild Bunch

Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch, is a Western Action film that has the potential to leave the audience with a controversially opinion about the violence displayed during the height of the Mexican Revolution with an outlaw gang called The Wild Bunch. The film is about a band of train and bank robbers looking to get away with one last heist and the lawman and his posse of bounty hunters who intend to capture or kill The Wild Bunch. The film The Wild Bunch graphically displays how audiences view western movies and in particular, the horrors of gunfights, crude and ruthless men and gun violence that had been previously left out of western genre movies all of which are established through cinematography, lighting and set design.

Western films are often related to cowboys, horses, railroads, rifles, saloon girls, outlaws, robbers, sheriff, and blue skies with rolling hills. Goodykoontz and Jacobs (2014) noted, “Typical westerns deal with maintaining law and order on the frontier, and their conflict derives from easily defined opposites of good vs. evil” (p. 81). However, Peckinpah chose to bring war and violence to a new level in the action packed western which is graphically displayed in the opening scene “Bank Shootout” (Movieclips, 2014). In this scene, a

This film also stretched the boundaries of most typical western films by the explicit depiction of violence through bloody, brutality, horrific scenes of violence relating to the Vietnam War. When watching this film, one can see the theme of violence and war portrayed throughout it. With the multiple shots and speeding up and slowing down the film to capture the horrible violence and bloodshed. The Wild Bunch elevated Western films to a whole new level because of its graphic violence and portrayal of men attempting to survive by any