Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a unique western. Parts of it are just brilliant, other moments are bungled, but it is composed and structured like no other movie from the genre.

Everyone knows the western legend about these two central characters, who went from being friends to sworn adversaries. The leading performances of James Coburn (Garrett) and Kris Kristofferson (Billy) are rather colourless, but the subsidiary characters are beautifully delineated. There are some pretentious moments. For example, near the start Billy is arrested and as he makes his way towards the lawmen who have come to take him, he adopts a Christ-like pose which is presumably meant to signify that he was some kind of martyr among Wild West outlaws (when, in reality, he was probably just a psychopath).

However, there are stunning moments in the film too. In fact, the scene in which Slim Pickens stumbles, wounded and mortally bleeding, to a riverside so that he can die peacefully is arguably the most moving scene ever in a motion picture. The acting, the music and the photography fit together harmoniously to make this a truly magical cinematic moment.

One word of warning: beware of the incoherent, chopped-up 106 minute version of the film. If you're planning to watch it, go for the full 122 minute director's cut, which is immeasurably superior.

Opening with the gunning down of Pat Garrett in 1909, we flash back to 1881 where Garrett has been hired to bring his ex-partner in crime Billy the Kid to justice. The story unfolds against a backdrop of a west that is moving forward, driven by businessmen (represented by Chisum) leaving behind the 'old ways'.

Of modern (ie after 50's and 60's) westerns Once Upon a Time in the West stands out as the best. However I feel that this film covers similar themes, of the death of the cowboy way and passing of times. The story is not really a duel between Pat and Billy but more a look at times changing around them – with Garrett changing with them and Billy trying to remain still. The story is well told with plenty of good characters, great setups and interesting dialogue. The relationships and the look at the old west 'code' easily hold the interest.

Peckinpah does plenty of good work here – for example intercutting the killing of Garrett with the killing of chickens etc, making it visually clever too. However his best move is the use of Bob Dylan's score – it could have been intrusive and made the film feel tacky and like it tries too hard to be hip. Instead the score works well and gives the film a soulful feel.

The cast is not only superb but deep with talent. Coburn is as good as ever as Garrett, struggling to move with times he doesn't approve of. Kristofferson is good, but his character of Billy is not well developed, but he still has a strong role to play. The support cast is full of famous faces from Westerns and a few actors just starting out – slim Pickens, Chill Wills, Jack Elam, Luke Ashew, Charles Martin Smith, Harry Dean Stanton and a good part for Bob Dylan.

If you're watching it – make sure you've got the restored version that adds 15 minutes and uses the score better. The director's version makes more of the role of Boss Chisum and fills the story out with playful brothel scenes and delivers a few more cameos. It makes a big difference to the film and lifts the story above being Garrett versus Billy the Kid.

Overall an excellent western from one of the greats at this type of thing.

Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" has much in common with "One-Eyed Jacks"; Marlon Brando's take on the Billy the Kid story, which was based on Charles Neider's novel, "The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones".

Although Neider's book, ridiculously renamed "Guns Up" in a Pan paperback edition (the one I read), is a fictionalised account, it is an unforgettable masterpiece, invoking a unique sense of nostalgia for the Old West. Peckinpah loved the book and was inspired to write what turned out to be the first screenplay for "One-Eyed Jacks", later made by Marlin Brando who changed just about every element.

Although Peckinpah dropped out of that project early, when he finally got a chance to make his version, he moved a long way from Neider's book. In fact, the script moved closer to the historical record. However, although Neider's book is not credited, it's obvious that Peckinpah tried to capture its spirit.

The story tells how Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid once rode together, but eventually found themselves on opposites sides of the law. When Billy brutally escapes from jail, in one of the film's best sequences, it sets in motion a ruthless hunt by Pat Garrett, which can only have one ending.

Peckinpah actually frames the film with the death of Garrett. This sequence along with others have the trademark Peckinpah slow motion deaths with arching blood spray - techniques that had already become a little hackneyed even by 1973.

However, the central problem was in Peckinpah's casting of Kris Kristofferson. Not so much, as many reviewers have suggested, that at 37 he was too old to play Billy the Kid, but more because he just didn't project the necessary sense of danger; he comes across as too affable, too laid back. Brando in "One Eyed Jacks" gave a stunning performance as a man with a dangerous edge, and although it might seem unfair to compare the two, that lack of threat is a key weakness in Peckinpah's film.

Bob Dylan is in the movie and also provides a couple of very nasally songs on the soundtrack; his presence isn't just anachronistic, it's bizarre.

On the other hand, James Coburn is just about perfect as Pat Garrett, and the rest of the cast is probably the greatest coming together of iconic stars from western movies ever - Chill Wills, Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, LQ Jones, Katy Jurado, Gene Evans, Paul Fix and others - one of the joys of the film is in spotting them.

Apparently the film was badly cut by the studio. Despite that, and some strange decisions by Peckinpah himself, the film is nothing less than interesting. But because of all the tampering, like Brando's film, it misses out on greatness. As for Neider's book, it still awaits the right filmmaker to give it the definitive treatment on the screen.

I enjoyed the film very much, in part because Peckinpah continues his theme, as he did in "Ballad of Cable Hogue" and "The Wild Bunch", of the illusion of who is "good" and who is "evil." Also, Peckinpah mourns the passing of people such as Garrett and Billy; at one point Garrett says to Poe, "This country's getting old, and I'm to get old with it." Garrett knows that he and Billy, among others, are to disappear from the West as big business and civilization advance, and Garrett tries to avoid this by selling out to Chisum (Barry Sullivan) and the Santa Fe Ring. But Garrett is a torn man; he is trying to avoid the tide of history by avoiding the eventual meeting with Billy, while also trying to avoid the financial forces (e.g., Chisum) that are making individuals such as himself disappear, so that big business will take over. The entire film is really a depiction of Garrett and Billy avoiding each other in order to resist historical forces that they would have a better chance of surviving if both of them left New Mexico or if both of them were on the same side. However, Garrett feels that aligning himself with the ranchers is better for survival, but in the end the hand that fed him, so to speak, is the same hand that destroys him. A truly poetic, and quite elegiac film, one that I feel is underrated among Peckinpah's films.

As with some lives, there's the sacrifice of waste for value.

This is a failure of a movie. It is incoherent, especially in the sense it was originally intended to deliver: as a member of the friend turned hunter genre. It has KristofFerson more inappropriately cast than usual. Its designated watcher Bob Dylan, was ineffective. It lacks any of the binding features of a long form work.

This is a success of a movie. It is broken in just the same way its characters are. Their lives make no sense other than as a container for confidence. This is am aimlessly wandering film about aimlessly wandering souls and the minor folks the collect in different ways. It sags in places because you can see that there is no purpose. But it has moments of such pure brilliance that you have to wonder about the miracle of Zen acceptance. The photography, any scene with Coburn and the score are in such harmony they seem to have been created together all the way from the edge of time.

The really vexing thing is Dylan. This was during one of his creative valleys, and probably his worst period. The music is meditative but hardly sharp. Its aimless and pastel. He looks dull. Supposedly this was during a heroin addiction and his association with great musicians that were lost (like George Harrison). He by himself in his better days could have snapped this film into importance merely by actually watching, by being in it truly. He's not there.

Some of the episodes you will never forget. I count three small masterpieces. One lasts less than 60 seconds and involves a family floating down a small river. Coburn and the apparently mad father point rifles at each other and then in apparent recognition of the other's meanness, put them down, while children expectantly cower.

A second is the much mentioned sequence where a sheriff has been enlisted against his will. His tough wife accompanies, an angry killing machine. But he is mortally wounded and as he stumbles to the river to gently die, she follows in an astonished grief. Dylan sings Knocking on Heavens's Door — apparently removed from one cut. Its a whole life together shown.

The third is muffed before its over. Billy and his woman in that town are making love right before his demise. Pat sits outside listening, passion drained from his life. You should be able to see that this is why he wants to kill Billy — but you cannot because of how it is cut. But before that you see Billy and Maria make love and it is clear that though both are poor actors, they really are deeply in love. Its deep, knowing we are watching too, watching because we seek passion.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.