Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

[Juan Miranda]

Kris Kristofferson sucks!!!!!

Bob Dylan is even worse. Somehow though the picture manages to survive.

[Tuco the ugly]

Bob Dylan is even worse. Somehow though the picture manages to survive.

bob dylan looks like a romanian gipsy,but he wasn't so important anyway.it is kris k. that makes this movie look worse than it is,i wonder who's idea was to give him the leading role,oh my

[dave jenkins]

Grogs, which version are you watching, 1988 or 2005?

[Tim]

  Not Peckinpah's best, but I did enjoy it enough to buy the DVD last winter.  Part of the fun is seeing all the great western character actors pop up throughout the movie.  It seems every scene has someone show up for a brief appearance or cameo.

  Hope ya enjoy it, Grogs!

[Juan Miranda]

It seems every scene has someone show up for a brief appearance or cameo.

Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado have the best little scene, I think. Even Dylan's whiney music fails to ruin the sheer elegiac beauty of it.

[Groggy]

I watched the 1988 version.

Just got through watching it, and to be honest I wasn't impressed.  I wasn't sure what to expect, since I'd heard both good and bad about it, but I'll have to say that my first impression was iffy.

First, I'll say the good.  James Coburn was amazing and I think there's no doubt it's his best performance - he is Pat Garrett, it seems with no "acting" required.  Kristofferson and Dylan were okay, if nothing special.  Some of the shootouts were pretty well-done.  But there were a lot of things, some minor, some not, that I'll be more than happy to complain about. 

First off: Bob Dylan's music was absolute bullshit.  Loud, annoying, distracting, it seemed completely out of place and certainly dragged down the movie.  The opening scene (the killing of Garrett and the killing of the chickens) was very well-edited, but the happy music ruined the power the scene might have had.  I'll give Dylan the benefit of the doubt; I'd probably like the music outside of the movie, but it came this close to ruining the film.

Second, the little parade of cameos, while amusing, made the film have a very cold and distant feel to it.  Other than R.G. Armstrong and Richard Bright (and maybe Jack Elam) none of the minor characters made much of an impression on me because their tenure in the film was so brief.  As "elegiac", "poetic", and "beautiful" as Slim Pickens' death scene allegedly was, I found it completely uninvolving because we'd only known the character for about two minutes before he caught a bullet in the gut.  It's hard to care for characters you know nothing about.  L.Q. Jones had an interesting character but he got killed off very quickly.  Jason Robards was cool as Lew Wallace, but how long was he in the movie?  John Beck, Charles Martin Smith, Barry Sullivan, and Richard Jaeckal were flat and uninteresting to an extreme, and Emilio Fernandez's bit was really stupid, to be quite frank.

Did I like the movie?  Yes, overall I did, and I'll certainly watch it again to digest it.  But it wasn't a clasic.  I'll give it a 7/10.

[Leone Admirer]

Thanks for your thoughts Groggy. Next time try the 2005 version, there is a lot of controversy around that version regarding, is it really what Sam Wanted, different opening title sequence, choice of music etc.

[Groggy]

Thanks for your thoughts Groggy. Next time try the 2005 version, there is a lot of controversy around that version regarding, is it really what Sam Wanted, different opening title sequence, choice of music etc.

I'll watch that version next time I watch the film, to be sure.

[The Peacemaker]

I saw this movie just recently and I feel the exact same way Groggs. I enjoyed it but it's not great. My least favorite Peckinpah film for sure.




And Bob Dylan's performance was horrible. In every scene he's in he has this look saying " what the hell am I doing here? "

[cigar joe]

I always thought Kristofferson was too old for the part, that's why  they had him shave his beard, make him look younger, didn't work.

[Leone Admirer]

It could be seen as one of those films where what happened behind the camera was more interesting then what went in front of it, I've been told some great stories.

[Amaze]

I'll have to see this again sometime, last time I believe I saw the 2005 cut

[Juan Miranda]

we'd only known the character for about two minutes before he caught a bullet in the gut.  It's hard to care for characters you know nothing about.

You're missing the point as to why these well known genre stars were cast in the first place. As soon as we see Pickens, Elam, Robards et all, we know all we need to know about them. Peckinpah wasn't interested in developing or exploring any but the titular characters - the rest of the cast were there as a form of "typage", in exacly the same way Elam and Strode were cast in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. They brought to the picture a vast back-story in terms of cinema history, audience association and even affection.

It's entierly due to Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan's distinctive lack of these qualities that they remain so bland  in this movie (as well as their complete lack of acting skills). In a way, Peckinpah took Leone's interpretation of Eisenstein's concept of "typage" and tried to make it his own, but instead of unknowns, he employed stars he assumed his audience would recognise (if not nesseseraly be able to put a name to). As such, when we see Pickens stagger off to die, we see this gentle, almost dumbly brave, slighty foolish and dumpy figure we've known for years near the end of his life both in the fiction of the film, and in his own time left on Earth (he'd live only for 10 more years. The younger Peckinpah would outlive him by just a few months). Slim's wide eyed, almost sheepish expression in his final look to camera has an almost too painful awareness of all of this.

Edited for awful spelling and grammar.

[cigar joe]

I agree on the "typage" cameo's, if he had used another actor rather than KK this would have been a much better film.

[Groggy]

No Juan, I got the point of the cameos.  My complaint is, why should we care what happens to any of those guys?  Did we feel sorry for Elam and Strode when they got gunned down in OUATITW?  No.

I don't like the idea, however, that I need to be familiar with an actor (or two dozen actors)'s career(s) before watching a movie.  If a movie can't stand on its own merits, then what good is it?  I enjoyed OUATITW the first time I saw it even though I didn't get all the little homages.  They add a nice layer to the movie, but the movie itself is so well-done that the film would work even if all the ideas were original.  If, as you imply, PGABTK relies entirely on such an idea, then it's really nothing more than an in-joke for Western fans.  The film still seems to me very cold and distant, particularly compared to "The Wild Bunch" and "Ride the High Country". 

And I agree with Leone Admirer.  Reading Peck's bio by David Weddle, he was drunk or very sick (along with most of the cast) about 95% of the time filming this - and studio interference certainly didn't help.  It seems like Peckinpah wasn't really trying, or wasn't able to come up with anything genuinely interesting.  The studio is a convenient scapegoat, but there's more to it than that.  Like with "Major Dundee", I think the main problem was not the studio, but rather than Peckinpah had no idea what in the hell he was doing.  I think I'm beyond thinking he's a genuine genius, maybe a flawed one at best.