Helluva opening here. Just some kids. Playing with a small theater filled with a shitload of ants, attacking a scorpion. Laughing. And then burning it to the ground.
I’ll just let that sit there for a bit.
This takes place at the tale end of the cowboy era. Well, call it the outlaw era, more accurately. Cars are making their way onto the scene. Marshalls, Pinkerton-types, machine guns and military are becoming more of a force to be reckoned with. And this crew of outlaws know it. A heist of some Texas Railroad coffers takes a turn for the worst, while laying pure chaos and death upon the town unfortunate enough to be the target. It gets ugly, like shootin ducks in a barrel. Fish are bad enough, this one is fuuuucked up.
And it goes south from there. Literally, to Mexico. Things ain’t so great down that way either. The gang, what’s left of em, are held together by Pike (William Holden, doing a great job jumping between the ruthless and the conflicted soul). His right-hand man Dutch (Ernest Borgnine) helps keep a bit of it in check. Warren “Big Toe” Oates isn’t the happiest of em. But, you know, outlaws. Honor is hard to come by. This is a well done look at this nefarious gang dealing with the hand they are dealt. There’s a decent amount of angles and characters to make it engaging for the extended length of the flick. I’m not a big fan of “video games” but did end up playing the Red Dead Redemption series and loving it. I think they used this film as a basis for at least part of it, and rightly so. I’ve come to appreciate the Westerns genre a bit more over the years, and this is a solid entry.
