Rating: R
Genre:
Western
Release Date: 01/10/2006
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English/French
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 237 Minutes
Flags: Graphic Violence, Adult Situations, Western Violence
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in
Sam Peckinpah's final
Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang between cattle rustlings,
Billy the Kid (
Kris Kristofferson) ignores the advice of comrade-turned-lawman
Pat Garrett (
James Coburn) to escape to Mexico, and he winds up in jail in Lincoln, New Mexico. After
Billy theatrically escapes, inspiring enigmatic Lincoln resident
Alias (
Bob Dylan) to join him, the governor (
Jason Robards Jr.) and cattle baron
Chisum (
Barry Sullivan) requisition
Garrett to form a posse and hunt him down. Rather than flee to Mexico when he can,
Billy heads back to Fort Sumner, meeting his final destiny at the hands of his friend
Pat, who, two decades later, is forced to face the consequences of his own
Faustian pact with progress. With a script by
Rudolph Wurlitzer,
Peckinpah uses the historical basis of
Billy's death to eulogize the West dreamily yet violently as it is desecrated by corrupt capitalists. Both
Pat and
Billy know that their time is passing, as surely as
Garrett's posse knows that they are participating in a legend. Using familiar
Western players like
Slim Pickens and
Katy Jurado,
Peckinpah underscores the West's existence as a media myth, and he even appears himself as a coffin maker. Just as the bloodletting of
Peckinpah's earlier
The Wild Bunch (1969) invoked the Vietnam War, the casting of
Kristofferson and
Dylan alluded to the chaotic late '60s/early '70s present; the counterculture has little place in a corporate future. Also like
The Wild Bunch,
Pat Garrett was truncated by its studio; the cuts did nothing to help its box office. Key scenes, particularly the framing story of
Garrett's fate, have since been restored to the home-video version. In this director's cut,
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid stands as one of
Peckinpah's most beautiful and complex films, killing the
Western myth even as he salutes it.
~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
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