Synopsis
Best of enemies. Deadliest of friends.
Pat Garrett is hired as a lawman on behalf of a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.
1973 Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Pat Garrett is hired as a lawman on behalf of a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.
James Coburn Kris Kristofferson Richard Jaeckel Katy Jurado Chill Wills Barry Sullivan Jason Robards Bob Dylan R. G. Armstrong Luke Askew John Beck Richard Bright Matt Clark Rita Coolidge Jack Dodson Jack Elam Emilio Fernández Paul Fix L.Q. Jones Slim Pickens Jorge Russek Charles Martin Smith Harry Dean Stanton Claudia Bryar John Davis Chandler Michael T. Mikler Aurora Clavel Rutanya Alda Walter Kelley Show All…
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If it weren’t for Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah would be unanimously considered the last great Western director, essentially because he himself declared it so. His films outright deem the genre as having passed, with his characters regularly being aware of how their existence is no longer relevant. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, whose cast features a cavalcade of Peckinpah mainstays, follows exactly this trend, this time depicting the real life relationship between the two historical title characters and the eventual manhunt for the Kid led by Garrett. Pat’s history with and affection towards Billy can’t prevent him from being loyal to his badge, but his recognition of his own futility sure can make him feel like a worthless sack…
A melancholic reverie about how everything ends, and everyone is only free enough to die told by the point of view of a bastard who is damned to keep living. Every gut shot counts, and every lovely photographed western character actor is already a ghost. Movie image is sort of death in process anyway might as well make a movie that feels like a bunch of reaction shots to it. For some reason Bob Dylan is around to serenade us about it. I love how Pat Garret plays the same function as Robert Ryan does in The Wild Bunch, executor and witness to the end of times, but by blowing it up to such large proportion Peckinpan makes the elegiac…
"It feels like times have changed... Times maybe, not me." or "Why don't you kill him? He's my friend."
A movie that is half made up of the sudden, ugly fatal shootouts you expect of Peckinpah and half the resulting two best friends (played by some of the all-time best gruff character actors) regretfully holding one another until the other dies, completing the lyrical destiny everyone seems to know is coming. The young outlaw myths got old, drunk, depressed... They sold out and they're staring at their own broken reflections. It's the last days of the West(ern) and no one's thought of another way yet, so "adios." Bob Dylan gently, mournfully serenades these events and occasionally pops up to witness them or gruesomely throw a knife into someone's neck. I don't really know what else you can ask for from a movie.
“Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” is a living elegy of a film. It has a lingering sense not just of an ending; but of being young in a time past when the world had already started to die.
Sam Peckinpah’s last Western was released well outside the halcyon days of the genre. Its cast features a slate of 70s musicians who became icons after the age of the rock star was over. And it was directed by a man so deep in the throes of late-stage alcoholism that he cast himself as a bitter old coffin-maker.
“Kid,” about a cynical lawman hired by land barons to kill his outlaw of an old friend — ruminates on its own obsolescence. …
My first Sam Peckinpah and it was kind of amazing.
I loved how this basically played out as the end of the Wild West era. We have these old crooks clinging to the past, trying to fight the future the best they can, but it's really just a futile endeavor. Change is on the horizon.
This is the best role I have seen Coburn in, he is marvelous. Kris Kristofferson (sans facial hair) is great as Billy the Kid.
Longing for The Good Old Days™. High on melancholy.
I could have done without the violence against the poultry ofcourse, but it wasn't terrible enough to stop me from enjoying the movie.
One of my new favourite westerns.
Peckinpah's typical nihilism, while not unwarranted, can be a bit exhausting at times - but in this one it's replaced or at least mandated by a sense of poetic melancholy: it's a movie about the world becoming a little more ruthless than it was before, the vicious return of old and outmoded traditions, freedom, the unshakable relationship between the law and capital, the end of an era. One day the world is a friendly place for "outlaws," bohemians, drifters (casting Bob Dylan in a mostly thankless part is a stroke of ingenuity), etc..then suddenly it seems like you have a death wish. Then when everyone is finally killed off, they become "legendary." Ideals lost because the world gives up. Probably one of the saddest movies I've ever seen..
"Maybe he wants to have a drink with me."
Dishonorable poem of poetic dishonor. Socially conscious, post-counterculture, rock & roll western. The story of a man who doesn't want to run being chased by a man who doesn't want to catch him. Lethargy. Inertia. Stasis.
The western genre is typically characterized by a conflict between regretful mourning for the loss of the frontier and cautious optimism for the approach of civilization, but where the prototypical western myth tends to celebrate the arrival of civilized society, Peckinpah is more hesitant to embrace this socialization. While historically located in the same time period as most westerns (it takes place one year after Stagecoach), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid restricts itself almost single-mindedly to…
Maybe the saddest movie ever made. On the world contracting, and betrayal of ideals. Peckinpah's greatest, most devastating masterpiece.
An instant favorite. Peckinpah's direction is brutally poetic, Coburn and Kristofferson hide their inner pain with so much masculinity that it hurts, and Dylan's music is soulfully reminiscent. Like the rest of Peckinpah filmography I've seen this somehow remains contemplative while also maintaining a breakneck pace. This is a definetly a film that I'll be rewatching countless times.
Sam Peckinpah's final western revisits similar themes to those explored in Cable Hogue; largely it is an ode to the death of the old west, but here it is explored through the eyes of two characters with differing viewpoints. Pat Garrett is a lawman tasked with tracking down his old friend Billy the Kid, who has escaped custody. The film is lightly paced - there's plenty of time for consideration and reflection on the philosophy of the characters and situation. It's also slightly off-kilter and unhinged. The film is violent in places - but this is featured sparodically and in hard hitting bursts. It's very effective! It's absolutely beautifully shot with the locations nicely presented. I'm not a fan of…