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 quality disappear, it is sad, tired and just horrible, but he will keep going. This doesn't quite have the apocalyptic violence of Peckinpah more celebrated or cult movies, but it does linger on every bit of its aftermath. Everything good about James Coburn is put to great use by Peckinpah, he arriving to execute Billy at same time dangerous, professional, and complete out of the action is as good as anything Peckinpah has ever shot, a marvelous performance but even more important, one that is placed in a large design that make it resonate even more.
