Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid: The Special Edition

Which is better? "The wild bunch" or "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid"? It's a subject that Peckinpah scholars will debate endlessly and it's a tricky one. "The wild bunch" may be the more perfect film, but the achingly sad, melancholic atmosphere that Peckinpah achieves here in this film gets to me every time.

Coburn, as Pat Garrett, has never been better. His portrayal of Garrett - haunted, embittered and full of self-loathing - is a masterpiece of understated acting. By contrast, Kristofferson cuts a wonderfully romantic figure as The Kid, a wild, untameable spiirit of the True West. In his role, Kristofferson manages to combine warmth, innocence and fearlessness. The Kid is the man that Garrett could never, ever be. Garrett's going to kill the Kid, but he doesn't want to. The kid is his friend. But Garrett's been made Sherriff and it's his duty to hunt the Kid down and kill him. The real villains of the piece are the representatives of Power and Big Busines who have sent Pat Garrett on his mission. The Kid is a threat to their progress. It's easy to see in Peckinpah's western a parallel for America as Peckinpah saw it in 1972, the year of the film's production: corrupt, vicious and tainted by greed.

The Kid will die, still young and beautiful, his legend enshrined forever. Garrett, on the other hand, will grow old and miserable, eventually being brutally murdered by the same men who hired him to kill the Kid. Serious power destroys lives and friendships.

Peckinpah creates many memorable vignettes around the central story and paints a dispiriting portrait of the West in the late 19th century: inhospitable, almost third world, and filled with lowlifes who are either waiting to die or get killed. Some dream of escaping on a boat. There's so much aimlessness in this western.

Bob Dylan turns in a genuinely quirky performace, but his score is like a major character in itself. It comments on the action like a Greek chorus. His casting is important too: Dylan plays Alias, the man who saw it all happen, the man who is going to take it away and write it all down so that future generations will never forget...

A masterpiece from this most savage and lyrical of Western directors.

I bought this version and although it has been enhansed it has several good scenes deleted from it's original. I also have a version recorded from TV and it is a lot longer.

Sam Peckinpah created a masterpiece when he made this outstanding western about Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. The performances from Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn are superb and Bob Dylan also appears as well as Jason Robards. The best thing about the film is Dylan's outstanding soundtrack which gives the film a very modern, epic feel.
It can proudly rank alongside The Wild Bunch.

This is what sam peckinpah is known for. Tough characters and a rough film. Storywise it isn't brilliant but the characters carry the story. It is not that violent by todays standards so never mind the other reviewers who say it is. Vintage peckinpah

as you would think, according to the themes: there's revenge and shooting and drinking and robbing altogether, but there's also doubt about good and wrong, about what to do and what not, there's conscience in it... what makes it a more ambivalent western.