Out of time

The Wild Bunch

(1969)

Ah, romance: an elegiac (sometimes too self-consciously so) valediction to a bygone way of life, death, killing, dying, and outlawry. It remains a notable bloodfest, but the degree to which it doesn't shock as much as it did 40 years ago is testimony to how much it shook things up--to how much it was also an elegiac valediction to a bygone way of depicting violence in the movies.