This is arguably one of the greatest westerns ever made. And argument is what Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece has always caused, with its slow-motion blood-letting, its surrealistically choreographed gunfights and its portrayal of Pike Bishop's amoral Texas outlaws as heroes. Yet William Holden's laconic Bishop, however violent, belongs to a truly romantic breed as he leads his bunch to their ultimate fate against the revolutionary guerrilla forces of murderous general Mapache. Lucien Ballard's photography gives a funereal hue to this elegy to the passing of a certain breed of chivalry. You can see why John Wayne is said to have hated the film; Peckinpah was practically reinventing a genre, with no place left for false nobility.

An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them.