Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them.
Nearly flawless revisionist Western that demands at least one category be held back. The ending — the apocalyptic final battle — is arguably the most visceral and technically revolutionary shootout in cinema history, making it the hardest to dock. Cinematography under Lucien Ballard is extraordinary. Acting across the ensemble (Holden, Borgnine, Ryan, Oates, Johnson) is exceptional. The plot's elegiac meditation on obsolescence and honor is richly conceived. Novelty is genuinely exceptional — Peckinpah's film redefined the Western and influenced action cinema for decades. Forced to hold back one category: the plot, while thematically rich, follows a familiar outlaw-heist-betrayal structure that slightly grounds it relative to the other categories' singular achievements.