William Holden plays Pike Bishop, the ageing leader of an outlaw gang known as "The Wild Bunch". After a botched robbery in which most of the gang were killed, Pike flees across the border to Mexico with the survivors: Pike's right-hand-man Dutch Engstrom, played by Ernest Borgnine; the brothers Lyle and Tector Gorch, played respectively by Warren Oates and Ben Johnson; the young recruit Angel, played by Jaime Sánchez; and old-timer Freddie Sykes, played by Edmond O'Brien. They find themselves working for General Mapache, a debauched and corrupt warlord in the Mexican Federal Army, played by Emilio Fernández. Robert Ryan plays Deke Thornton, a former member of the Wild Bunch who has agreed to hunt down his partners in exchange for a pardon. He's placed in charge of a posse of bounty hunters assembled by the railroad company, who are probably more ruthless and trigger-happy than the people they're hunting.
This ended up being one of the most violent films of its time, with large-scale and bloody shootouts at the beginning and the end of the film. This was made at a time when the Spaghetti Western was popular, and placed further emphasis on the violence and amorality of the Wild West. The Wild Bunch takes this a step further, and portrays a bleak and savage world where even children are capable of cruelty. The opening has several shots of a group of kids gleefully tormenting scorpions with fire ants in a pit, which they then set alight. And near the end, when Mapache is torturing a rebel by dragging him behind his car, there are kids chasing after him, poking him with sticks, and even riding him. Those scenes are actually grimmer than the shootouts.
The opening shootout establishes the world perfectly. The Bunch attempt to rob a cache of silver from a railroad office, but the railroad's posse are waiting in ambush. The Bunch attempt to escape using a parade organised by the local Temperance Movement, but the bounty hunters fire on them anyway, and many civilians are killed in the crossfire. And when the surviving members of the Bunch escape, they find their loot consists of steel washers rather than the silver coin they hoped for, revealing that the whole thing was a set-up. Thornton argues with the railroad's chief of security, Pat Harrigan, stating that the townspeople should have been warned, but Harrigan had refused out of fear of tipping them off. In other words, lives were lost and neither side got what they wanted.
Amateur historian me is going to take over for a bit, as it's not clear exactly when this film takes place. The general consensus places the exact year as 1913. This is suggested because Mapache is mentioned to serving General Victoriano Huerta, who ruled Mexico as a military dictator from 1913 to 1914. However, there are a few mentions of "the war" - presumably the First World War - which didn't start until 1914, and which the USA didn't take part in until 1917. There's also mentions of General Pershing stationing troops across the border, which happened in response to Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico in 1916.
If you look past the violence, you'll find what's actually a bleak story of outlaws who refuse to accept a changing world. Of course, if violence isn't your thing, then I can recommend Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's a similar story but without the violence, and it was released in the same year. Actor Strother Martin actually appears in both.
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