Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Sam Peckinpah, USA, 1973, 106 minutes

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is an oasis of calm after the mayhem of Peckinpah's earlier The Wild Bunch, although it still contains enough spitting and shooting to count as a classic Peckinpah western. The story of how Pat Garrett turned from outlaw to criminal and hunted his former partner Billy the Kid, is an archetypal western legend, and the film's structure and dialogue presupposes a knowledge of the story.

Watching Pat Garrett feels like looking at a fascinating old photograph in which you can read the whole lives of the people captured. Peckinpah's use of freeze-frames to break up action scenes creates a feeling of melancholy for times irretrievably lost, as do the long dialogue scenes between Pat (James Coburn) and Billy (Kris Kristofferson). When Billy asks Pat how it feels to be wearing a badge, and he says, "It feels like times have changed", we see that they both know that there is no going back. The world no longer has a place for the kind of men they used to be, and they can either accept this and change or be destroyed.

Bob Dylan puts in a strange appearance as a silent, squinting vagrant; more important to the film is his thumping, scratching musical score which hangs in the air like dust throughout. There is also a rather unpleasant chicken-shooting sequence, although animal-rights activists should bear in mind that Sam "never shot any animal, man, woman or child that he didn't eat himself." Well worth seeing for its performances, unique atmosphere and integrity.

Review by Andrew Abbott
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95