10 Westerns You Need To Watch After Playing Red Dead Redemption 2
9. The Wild Bunch
Set at the end of the Old West in an ever-progressing world, Sam Peckinpah's ultra-violent The Wild Bunch is the quintessential tale of the demise of the era.
The film stars a cabal of ageing Hollywood icons as a gang of similarly ageing outlaws being backed into a corner by both the law and the world they now inhabit. The men are walking anachronisms, whose borrowed time is clear from the get-go.
After a botched attempt at a final score, Pike Bishop and the surviving members of his gang flee to the Mexican border to escape a group of now-deputised bounty hunters and happen upon the chance for another final score - which of course couldn't possibly go wrong this time - to steal US Army weapons for a corrupt Mexican Army officer. What follows is a series of betrayals with so many layers that even the Lannisters would recommend toning it down, culminating in one of the bloodiest and most brutal shootouts on film ever seen.
While the overarching theme of a gang coming ever closer to their inevitable doom makes a foregone conclusion seem obvious, The Wild Bunch contains just enough moments of hope and near-success to continually subvert that expectation. The ending is especially powerful, however, in suggesting that while this violent era may be coming to an end, another is about to begin, and the cycle is ever-continuing.