Tarantino included The Wild Bunch in a conversation about films that are almost impossible to fault, although he acknowledged its imperfections. That mixture of enthusiasm and reserve makes it possible to approach Sam Peckinpah without reducing his work to a celebration of bloodshed.
An accolade that does not erase the flaws
During his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live in October 2022, Tarantino spoke about films he considered perfect. When he added The Wild Bunch, he introduced a nuance: he did not see it as technically perfect, but its force seemed difficult to question. NME and other media reported the remark. The precision avoids turning the praise into a literal claim that every element of the film is flawless.
The Wild Bunch, released in 1969, follows a group of men whose way of life seems to be reaching its end. The wear is not only physical. Their codes of loyalty must survive within a world of economic interests, guns and powers that outweigh them. The violence emerges from that situation and from the decisions they make within it.
The film does not need to present its protagonists as exemplary people for their fate to become meaningful. We can recognise bonds, memories and contradictions without excusing every act. That ambivalence makes the audience’s identification more unstable than a simple division between heroes and villains.
Tarantino’s observation about imperfection is useful as a critical starting point. There are films whose power comes from the friction between elements that do not fit together neatly. Their greatness can coexist with excess, uncomfortable areas and questionable choices. Admiring them does not require erasing that tension.
The editing of violence and the perception of the body
In the major sequences of The Wild Bunch, violence does not appear as a homogeneous action that we can follow at a single pace. Changes in scale and duration fragment perception. One movement is interrupted, a body falls, another position enters the field of attention. The editing turns impact into a temporal experience as well as a spatial one.
Slow motion allows us to perceive the damage differently, but it does not work in isolation. Its effect depends on the contrast with faster images and on the accumulation of points of view. The viewer can feel fascination with the form and rejection of what that form shows at the same time.
Talking about poetic violence should not be used to erase the victims. The adjective can describe a shaping of rhythm and image, but it also risks making suffering decorative. In The Wild Bunch, the density of bodies, noise and destruction makes it difficult to maintain a completely clean relationship with the spectacle.
The space does not remain a neutral board, either. People occupy positions that change with every shot, and the collective scale prevents every death from receiving the same attention. That unequal perception is part of the sequence’s unease: the spectacle can exceed our ability to register individually what is happening.
These observations describe Peckinpah’s editing; they should not be turned into a supposed technical discourse by Tarantino. His documented praise gives access to the film. An examination of its images then makes it possible to discuss what this violence produces and why it continues to be difficult to reduce to a single response.
Loyalty, the end of an era and a shared decision
The relationship between the men gives weight to the final actions. A march or a brief exchange can contain decisions that no longer need a long speech to explain. The group has built up a history of losses and commitments; the viewer senses that burden in the way they walk and in the recognition between its members.
The code of loyalty does not resolve all their contradictions. It can drive a gesture of solidarity and coexist with cruelty, opportunism or contempt towards those outside the group. The film allows that group morality to retain dramatic appeal without becoming a universal ethic the audience must accept.
The tired faces add a physical dimension to that code. Experience may bring skill, but it also leaves signs of wear that no heroic statement can erase. The characters’ time is felt before anyone explains it.
There is also a difference between the nobility the characters imagine for themselves and the material reality of what they do. Money, guns and survival do not disappear when they invoke their principles. That mixture prevents them from becoming abstract emblems of a lost West. Their world may be ending and still be profoundly violent.
Tarantino’s admiration for Peckinpah includes other registers. In his 2019 BAFTA conversation, he mentioned Junior Bonner as a film he returns to for its characters. That brief reference reminds us that the affinity does not depend solely on bloody editing and that a career can offer very different pleasures.
The Wild Bunch remains a particularly intense case because it does not easily separate affection for the men from the horror of their acts. The audience can mourn a fate and recognise the harm that accompanies it at the same time. That tension gives meaning to the nuanced praise of 2022: a film can retain extraordinary force without thereby becoming a flawless or comfortable object.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.