Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

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.

Simply put, Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" is one of the last great Westerns ever made. Like most of 'Bloody' Sam's films, "Pat Garrett" was molested and cut by the studio, MGM upon its release. The film would be panned by audiences and critics. It's a shame that Peckinpah never lived to see the longer cut of the film finally released to a wider audience on VHS. It would become a cult hit and is now known as one of the best Westerns and one of Peckinpah's best.

The film depicts the final days of Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) before he was killed by his friend Pat Garrett (James Coburn), the newly appointed sheriff of the territory. Other than the fine performances of Coburn and Kristofferson, the film also features excellent supporting roles from famous Western regulars and members of Peckinpah's stock of actors. The long list of players include Jason Robards, Bob Dylan (also the film's music composer), Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, Katy Jurado, Paul Fix, Chill Wills, Jack Elam, Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Jaeckel, and Dub Taylor. Most of the characters are killed off in the film, violently evoking both the death of the West and Westerns.

Peckinpah's two regular themes are here: the death of the West, and men living past their time and deciding whether or not they should accept change. My favorite scene in the film takes place about halfway through the film. Pat Garrett, isolated and alone, is sitting by his fire near a river bank. He sees a man about his age and his family sailing on a raft down the river. The man is shooting bottles for target practice. Garrett takes a shot at a bottle. The man sees Garrett and shoots back. Garrett then takes cover behind the nearby tree. They both are aiming at each, but just lower their guns are stare at each other. The raft continues to flow down the river. The scene, which was the reason why Peckinpah, Coburn, and almost everyone wanted to take part in the film, has so much meaning to it. 1. It references an earlier scene with Garrett and Sheriff Baker (Slim Pickens). Baker was building a boat so he could drift out of territory because of how awful it has become. Tragicaly, Baker does not get a chance to see this dream. 2. The scene also references the shoot-out between Garrett and Black Harris (L.Q. Jones). Before his death, Harris yells to Garrett "Us old boys shouldn't be doing this to each other." The same thing happens between Garrrett and the man on the raft.

Other than the performances, the film also features some good musical pieces by Dylan. John Coquillon's cinematography is also very beautiful and haunting at the same time. Peckinpah, as always, was able to get period detail down correctly. Rudy Wurlitzer also did a fine job at the screenplay, despite Peckinpah improving most of it himself. Coburn's performance was possibly his best ever. The idea of Garrett having a lot of inner conflict was good. Garrett knew that he had a job to do, but just could not handle the fact it was his friend that he had to kill. Maybe he was the one who put the gun in the outhouse for Billy to use. It was also great to see the myth and actual facts of the last days of this incident played out.

Although this film may have a few faults (some of Dylan's music and a few of his scenes), "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" is really worth the time to view now that a DVD will be released on January 10th, 2006. The Two-Disc set will feature two versions of the film. The first one is a 115 min. version editied by Peckinpah biographers Nick Redman and Paul Seydor. The second disc will feature the 122 min. version assembled in 1988. According to both men, there was no final cut to "Pat Garrett." The version that Peckinpah screeded for the MGM heads was just a rough cut. Either way, the DVD will now a new generation of film lovers to be able to view how costly it is when an artist cannot complete his work. Peckinpah and editiors originally had six months to edit, but the idiots from the studio cut it down to two months. I guess the new 115 minute version of the film is closer to Peckinpah's vision because of notes and interviews with the filmmaker's colleagues. No matter which version you will watch, "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" is a sad but magnificent Western made by one of the last great storytellers of the Western genre.

Billy: Old Pat...Sheriff Pat Garrett. Sold out to the Sana Fe ring. How does it feel?

Pat: It feels like...that times have changed.

Billy: Times maybe. Not me.

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.

Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" is a rich, haunting, yet demanding work that, above everything else, sees Billy as a creature of his day and age…

He is by no means made a wholly sympathetic character, but who was sympathetic in the New Mexico of 1881? Peckinpah has most of his characters dyed with violence and sniffing the prevailing air of corruption—the chief protagonists, their filthy henchmen, even the onlookers…

Where and what is the law? No one seems to know or care… Garrett and Billy have seen both sides, like almost everyone else…

And among the confusion and violence that is the legacy of range war there is no gleam of purifying light in the efforts we see being made to clean up the territory… The powers that be want Billy out of New Mexico, not for ethical reasons, but rather so that things can be neatly protected for the approaching business exploitation…

Garrett is the man made sheriff to hunt him down and thereby the man who compromises . . . 'This country's getting older and I aim to grow old with it ... there's an age in a man's life when he has to consider what's going to happen next.'

But Billy can't compromise… It's not his way… "Billy, they don't like you to be so free!" proclaims the Bob Dylan theme song, summing up why the power men find Billy so irritating… Perhaps that's why Garrett who has sold out to power is in some ways a reluctant hunter… He salutes Billy's spirit—his very own personal declaration of independence—but he knows it's not the spirit of the new times…

It says much for Peckinpah's way with actors that he gets such admirable performances out of the comparatively inexperienced Kris Kristofferson, as Billy, and Bob Dylan, as Billy's mate… It says just as much for his Westerns perceptiveness that he relies even more heavily on experience… The well-tried James Coburn is both solid and hard to define as Garrett… And then there are the others who know their way around Westerns so well—Katy Jurado, Slim Pickens, R. G. Armstrong, Jason Robards, Jack Elam, Chill Wills… There's not a single performance here that isn't a rounded-off portrait in its own right…

It all adds up to a richness in characterization that is matched by the richness of marvelously composed scenes in which interiors and exteriors alike have been put together with loving care and attention to detail, whether it's a big set-piece 'shoot-up' or a close-up of a can of preserves—how such a can looked in 1881…

Garrett's hunt for Billy is told mainly in set-pieces and it has to be said that Peckinpah makes little narrative concession to an audience in the way they are strung together… But for the out and out Western fan this is a most memorable movie

Sam Peckinpah really is not the full problem or liability with Pat Garret & Billy the Kid, though he's not totally innocent in what shortcomings come with the film. The story by Rudy Wurlizter provides a mix of extraordinary scenes and some all-too laid-back ones or scenes that don't feel like there is any real dramatic pull or total interest in the dialog. The other great scenes, which make up the most memorable bits of the film, provide Peckinpah with enough to put his distinctive visual style and subversive approach to character dynamics and conventions of the Western genre, but the parts end up becoming greater than the whole. The version I saw, the 2005 cut, doesn't seem like it would do any more or less better with fine tuning, and it does feel like a Peckinpah movie more often than not. The story is simple, and has been told more times than one could try to count unless in historical context of the genre: Billy the Kid is a murderous criminal out on the lam, and Pat Garret, the sheriff, is out to get him by hook or by crook. The twist that Peckinpah provides at the core is that it's not a completely intense thriller with a lot of chases, but more of a journey where the two men- who before becoming Dead-or-Alive Wanted-man and newly appointed Sheriff were sort of on friendly terms (as first scene shows well and clear)- are not in a big rush to meet their fates, even if the whole experience is starting to make things all the more embittered.

Pat Garret & Billy the Kid does provide, at the very least, some very great scenes throughout- some of the best I've seen in any Peckinpah film- and is a reminder of why the director was an important figure, and remains as such, in American cinema. Scenes like the river-side bit where Pat Garret shoots at the same bottle floating in the river as the guy with his family on the river-raft does; the astoundingly dead-pan shooting scene between Billy (Kris Kristofferson) and Alamosa (Jack Elam) where they sit down for a peaceful meal and go to it without much of a fuss in front of Alamosa's family; the scene with Garret getting the man to drink in the bar too much as Alias (Bob Dylan) reads off the products on the other side of the room in order to shoot him down; the scenes (in the 2005 cut that seem fairly important) showing Garret and his attitude towards women, either with his wife or with the prostitutes. It's a shame then that after the first twenty minutes or so, which includes that unforgettable shoot-out (one of the best in Peckinpah's Westerns) as Garret first corners Billy at the hide-out and drags him off to a not-quite jail before his escape, it then goes sort of up and down in full interest.

It's not that I wouldn't recommend Pat Garret & Billy the Kid, far from it, and especially for fans of the genre looking for a grim turn of the screws on one of those old-time mythic Western stories. The only main issue is that, in an odd way, the other side of the coin that Peckinpah and his writer are working with here- subversion- has the side of almost being too at ease with itself, of being too comfortable just rolling along. This might be in part due to the leads themselves; Coburn, to be sure, is a pro as always and is especially good in the almost anti-climax at the Fort, but Kristofferson is not very well-rounded, and comes off as being sort of all grins and smiles when he should be living up a little more to his reputation. It's so against-the-grain of the old-west that it comes close (though it doesn't, contrary to what Ebert said in his review) to being dull. Luckily, Peckinpah never lets it get too uninteresting, and there's always something to look forward to, like the touching, actually poetic final scene with Slim Pickens, and seeing the likes of Stanton, Elam and Robards in various roles.

Dylan, on the other hand, is sort of a double-edged sword here. The music that he provides for the film, which includes guitar segways, lyricism and some classic songs (with 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' just the right effect when used), is one of the very best things about the movie. But his presence as "Alias" is not as good. He seems to be there more for the sake of being in a Western, or a Peckinpah movie, and taking aside his shtick about feeling like he was a character here in a previous life or whatever, he's almost a non-entity, and alongside the seasoned character actors and old pros at doing this it doesn't feel quite right. This being said, he's not too much of a deterrent, and it's great having the music put to scenes that wouldn't be the same without it all. And, of course, it's Peckinpah all the way, with the men in a sort of damned state of affairs, knowing deep down that the chosen paths are not very easily traveled, and always surrounded by the most distinct, brutal and realistic violence possible. It's the kind of Western I probably wouldn't pass up if it came on TV and I had a good shot of whiskey, though it doesn't reach the level of practical perfection like the Wild Bunch.