PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973) *** Sam Peckinpah cuts scenes on lingering facials like no one ever has, and James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson are perfect in the leads. Durango (Old Mexico) couldn't look more like New Mexico in the olden days. Without question one of the great westerns ever, but clarity is gained when you realize that the studio radically edited the film, cutting out 15 key minutes and rendering a final cut that Peckinpah demanded that his name be removed from. For all that they couldn't take out the artistry, the haunting sense of foreboding and lost opportunity as big business turns the outlaw gunners against themselves, in order to make things safe for civilization (which would now serve industry), and maybe turn a quick buck in the process. One of the cut scenes revealed that Garrett (Coburn) was killed by the man who ordered him to kill Billy. The political undertones are maintained nonethless, with Kristofferson occasionally muttering about "selling out," in reference to his one-time friend who should know better. James Coburn has never been better, an elegant but devastated outlaw wooed by the dark side to become a lawman; something of a Wild West Peter O'Toole crossed with a vampire from Santa Fe vogue. The scenes between Slim Pickens and Katy Jarado (who appears to be the baddest gun in the west) are incredibly poignant, particularly the final one accompanied by the Bob Dylan score. It takes great talent to typecast Dylan as a cowboy, accomplished here by giving him a feather in his hat, knives instead of guns, and reading a grocery inventory in distinctively iniambic poetic meter. The film has the feel of the land, the timing of truth, and offers wisdom beyond words: the latter two assets no doubt being the ones that made the studio desperate to cut it. Not one to be easily deterred, Peckinpah would make his points even more severely in Convoy. "God damn law's ruining this country."
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