“The Getaway” (1972)
There’s hardboiled, and then there’s “The Getaway.” Based on a novel by pulp godfather Jim Thompson, whose script was rewritten by titan of cinematic masculinity Walter Hill, directed by the never-knowingly-nice Peckinpah, starring a McQueen firmly in the midst of a cocaine-soaked marriage breakdown, and a miscast Ali McGraw who simply can’t balance out all the gushing testosterone, this is a slick package expertly tooled and scored (byQuincy Jones), to be a boys-night hit. And on that level, it succeeds, then as now. The most profitable of all Peckinpah’s films to that point, it was a rebound from the disappointing reception of his softer hearted McQueen-starrer “Junior Bonner” and follows Doc, a newly released ex-con and his wife as they go on the run after a botched heist leaves them carrying the loot. Pursued by cannon-fodder cops and a variety of goons led by the repellent Rudy (Al Letteria), it culminates in a bloodbath in El Paso and a tender reconciliation for the by-then real-life lovers, but not before their road trip’s many detours have amassed quite a body count. Given its pedigree, it’s almost strange that it isn’t quite top-tier Peckinpah —aside from an impressively evocative opening that cross cuts between Doc’s last days in prison and his reunion with his wife, this is mostly a straight-up action/heist film. The staples are there —stunningly edited montages, patented slo-mo bullet ballets and a blank disregard for the lives of minor characters (witness the poor sap dentist who hangs himself in shame over his wife’s flagrant affair with Rudy). But despite all that, Peckinpah feels curiously recessive as a presence here, and the result is probably some of his smoothest but also most anonymous prime-era work. [B]
“Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid” (1973)
Peckinpah intended “Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid,” to be a grandly demythologizing take on the two famous outlaws, but it proved to be one of the bleakest experiences of his career: with his drinking at something close to a peak and clashing once again with the studio (MGM, this time), the film was taken away from him, cut heavily, and poorly received. “Peckinpah attempted to have his name removed from ‘Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid,’ wrote Roger Ebert at the time , “I sympathized with him,” while star James Coburnclaimed “The MGM cut really blew my mind, it was really fucking terrible. It made me sick, after all the anguish of making the fucking thing.” Its reputation only began to be restored when a preview cut of the film resurfaced in 1988, and even in that form, it feels somewhat compromised, whether from interference or through Peckinpah’s own doing. But what remains is nevertheless a deeply distinctive and utterly, utterly sad picture that proves hard to shake. Coburn and Kris Kristofferson play the title characters, with the former out to bring in the latter, a story that echoes many of Peckinpah’s oaters. But the tone is quite different, with the elegiac bleakness of “The Wild Bunch” turned up to eleven, and a sort of counter-culture existential comedown feel (aided in part by the music from Bob Dylan, who also cameos) that makes the film stand alone even among the revisionist Westerns that were starting to emerge at the time. The expansive cast are all excellent, but it’s Coburn’s movie: the second of his three collaborations with the director is easily his best, and arguably the best he ever gave. Utterly misread at the time, it’s now catching up to “The Wild Bunch” as the most influential of the director’s films on a new wave of filmmakers, with modern-day classics like “I’m Not There” and “The Assassination Of Jesse James” paying explicit homage. [A-]
“Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia” (1974)
According to Peckinpah, ‘Alfredo Garcia’ was his only film to be released exactly as he wanted it. And to watch it is to wonder how anyone could possibly have attempted to tame something so bizarre, even if they’d wanted to. It’s the outlandish, surreal story of a barman called Bennie (Warren Oates in iconic perma-shades) who sees a way out of his squalid circumstances when two hitmen (Robert Webber and Gig Young in roles that homage “The Killers,” from Don Siegel, Peckinpah’s early mentor) commission him to find the eponymous Garcia, who has a bounty on him. Bennie’s prostitute girlfriend Elita (a terrific Isela Vega) not only had slept with Garcia, but she knows he is already dead, and so the couple go to find his grave —it’s a loved-up road trip interrupted when a pair of bikers (Kris Kristofferson playing one) attempt to rape Elita, and become the first of many people killed. But it’s only after that, when Bennie is knocked unconscious and wakes up half-buried with Elita dead beside him, that things start to get really odd. If some of Peckinpah’s films are analogous to a “Moby Dick” narrative, ‘Alfredo Garcia’ feels like what happens after the white whale is caught and the real cost of the pursuit is revealed. Bennie responds by essentially losing his mind, talking to Garcia’s disembodied, rotting, fly-infested head and embarking on a bloody rampage of vengeance. Contemporary critics loathed it, which seems inconceivable to those of us who admire controlled lunacy more than perhaps any other quality of Peckinpah’s, especially when that control threatens constantly to give way to the terrifying all-out insanity that snarls around the edges of this uniquely deranged film. [A-]
