16. The Wild Bunch (1969)
Directed by Sam 'King of the violent Western' Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch is set on the Mexico-Texas border and features a group of ageing outlaws trying to make sense of the new world around them. The level of violence in the film was highly controversial upon release but the film is highly decorated and critically praised. Featuring bounty hunting, armed robbery, train robbery, embezzlement, betrayal, torture, violent bloody showdowns and revolution, The Wild Bunch is not a film to be taken lightly. It features desperate men driven to desperate acts for survival. It was a very unstable period in history and Peckinpah's film reflects this to a T. The violence is uncomfortable, but that is just how things were in Mexico-Texas back then. Peckinpah maintained that he was drawing an allegory to the violence in Vietnam at the time of the film's making. He wanted to decry the good old fun Cowboys and Indians myth and show the real violence that gun based conflict could produce. He was utterly horrified when audiences went to see The Wild Bunch to get a thrill rather than soak up its sobering message. The film in its violence and realism stands as one of the best Westerns ever filmed.