The Wild Bunch
Warner Brothers/Seven Arts | Release Date: June 18, 1969 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
98
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
The on-screen carnage established a new level in American movies, but few of the films that followed in its wake could duplicate Peckinpah's depth of feeling. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The Wild Bunch is one of the great defining moments of modern movies. Read full review
100
The New YorkerPauline Kael
It’s no accident that you feel a sense of loss for each killer of the Bunch: Peckinpah has made them seem heroically, mythically alive on the screen. Read full review
100
NewsweekDavid Ansen
The Wild Bunch still retains its sorrowful, fatal power because of the complexity of Peckinpah's attitudes about violence. He forces us to confront our own voyeuristic ambivalence; we're alternately horrified by the butchery and exhilarated by the orgiastic energy his balletic spectacles stir up. Read full review
100
Orlando SentinelJay Boyar
It is certainly one of the best westerns ever made, and the best film of any kind to come out in 1969. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The hard action, bracing wit and mournful grace of Peckinpah’s cowboy classic shames every new movie around. It’s a towering achievement that grows more riveting and resonant with the years. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Not only does The Wild Bunch illustrate Peckinpah's mastery of his medium, but it presents a story that is effective on nearly every level: the emotional, the visual, and the visceral. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChroniclePeter Stack
Maybe the best shoot-'em-up ever made, the one that turned meanness into a haunting pictorial poetry and summed up the corruption of guilt, old age and death in the American fantasy of the Old West. Read full review
100
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
At once strongly metaphoric and shamelessly visceral, Peckinpah’s saga of outlaws on the lam is arguably the strongest Hollywood movie of the 1960s—a western that galvanizes the clichés of its dying genre with a shocking jolt of delirious carnage. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleLouis Black
Peckinpah's grasp, for once, matches his reach and in this Western story he achieves a mythological tone for his moral fable. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunStephen Hunter
It remains one of the best-written and best-performed American films of all time. Read full review
100
San Francisco ExaminerGeorge Powell
Rivetingly realistic, edited in a gripping and exciting style unseen up to that time, and marvelously scripted. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
An extraordinarily well-made film about anachronistic outlaws in the early 20th century, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch feels like it should have been the final western. Read full review
100
EmpireJohn Naughton
From The Godfather to Heat, the stamp of The Wild Bunch is self-evident. Italian director Carlo Carlei summed up the debt owed to the film and its director when he said, "There is a chain of inspiration like The Bible... Everything comes from Peckinpah." Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubTom Breihan
While the movie may be a Western—one of the best Westerns ever made, in fact—it’s also an action movie, one that was crucial to action movies becoming what they would eventually be. Read full review
90
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
In purely cinematic terms, the film is a savagely beautiful spectacle, Lucien Ballard's superb cinematography complementing Peckinpah's darkly elegiac vision. Read full review
90
The New York TimesVincent Canby
Very beautiful and the first truly interesting, American-made western in years. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh Larsen
A thrilling and infuriating burst of movie id, The Wild Bunch makes you want to slump into the dust and stare dumbly into the distance. Read full review
80
TimeStaff (Not Credited)
The Wild Bunch contains faults and mistakes, but its accomplishments are more than sufficient to confirm that Peckinpah, along with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn, belongs with the best of the newer generation of American film makers. Read full review
50
VarietyWhitney Williams
Film at 145 minutes is far over-length, and should be tightened extensively, particularly in first half. After a bang-up and exciting opening, it appears that scripters lost sight of their narrative to drag in Mexican songs, dancing and way of life, plus an overage of dialog, to the detriment of action. Read full review
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