I had this crazy hockey coach when I was thirteen. His name was Stephen but he told everyone to call him Flint. He was a punk rocker. He played in a band called Rope. He shaved his head and had these big, twelve hole, cherry leather Doc Martins. He wore an old army surplus jacket with the word "Fight" written on the back in red paint. We all thought he was the coolest guy on the planet. 

Some coaches gave pep talks before games. Others would lead the team in a prayer...
Flint would show up minutes before game time. He’d come into our dressing room with a large ghetto blaster. He’d play us Fugazi’s Waiting Room at full volume.…

"When you side with a man, you stick with him. If you can't, your like some animal"

That line is spoken by Pike Bishop (William Holden) halfway through the film and to me it sums up the code of honour these men live by, it may not always make sense but to them it's a way of life and they are far to old and Stubborn to change.
The Wild Bunch is Sam Peckinpah's final nail in the coffin of the traditional western, it's bloody and violent, a film inhabited by real men's men, there's no hero's here, only grizzled veterans who have done whatever it takes to survive in this unforgiving period of history.
One of the best cast…

One of my favourite films of all time,I watched this for the first time on blu-ray and was astounded at the quality of EVERYTHING. Peckinpah directs this 1969 masterpiece with genuine love for the genre and with real vigour in his quest to re-establish himself in the film industry after his troubled time on "Major Dundee" and his firing from "The Cincinnati Kid" .
Shot in Mexico, this was a labour of love for Peckinpah who cast some of the best middle-aged actors around at the time. Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates,Robert Ryan and a rejuvenated William Holden give arguably some of the best performances of their careers in this blood-soaked epic. Holden especially is perfectly cast as the ageing leader…

One of the last great Western blockbusters, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is culturally significant for pushing the boundaries of the moral codes of the time by employing then-extreme violence and carefree gunplay. It is probably the most well known film to garner the X rating, and survives and thrives in the minds of western fans everywhere. The film works because it's not just a display of frenetic violence and bloodshed. There's actually a great story, with a great adventure and a great screenplay as well. It feels appropriate that I label this film as one of the last great blockbuster westerns, because the tale embodies the turn of the century, when the dominance of the cowboy slowly but surely…

That was fantastic. I only wish I had discovered it sooner. With it’s moral ambiguity, bloody shootouts, and violent ending, The Wild Bunch serves as a precursor to the modern era of the western. The plot is set to the backdrop of a dying Wild West, which is an appropriate description for the genre itself by the late 60’s, especially for the stories of clear cut white hats vs black hats. The Wild Bunch dares to be different, dares to be more realistic, and it’s all the more fascinating for it. Despite being nearly fifty years old, this film holds up extremely well. I imagine in 1969 it must have been considered very dark and overly violent. However you could…

This is a movie that really knows how to start and finish (and do a little stretching in the middle). The Bunch are kind of assholes for most of the movie, but they have a stick-togetherness that really wins me over. The finale really hammers everything home in a perfect way.

It's clear these outlaws are approaching the end of their rope, and there's a great moment where they all just kind of quietly agree that they're going to abandon their final payout and go after their captive friend instead, a suicide mission. But it's also one last opportunity to get super wild before a world of inescapable lawman and these strange things called automobiles swallow them up. They go…