OK, Dad, just stay calm: "The Wild Bunch"

Yeah, it's one of Dan's favorite movies ever. Between this and "Cool Hand Luke," the guy has some weird Strother Martin obsession.

In fact, funny story about how I came to own this seminal late '60s Western on DVD. When mi papa got some kind of deluxe version to replace his original DVD, he gave me said original. Now it turns out that Dan recently bought yet another, high-def version of "The Wild Bunch," making it a total of three DVDs of the same movie he has purchased. So yeah, you can say he likes it.

And you know, that's not a bad thing, since it's a pretty good movie.

Director Sam Peckinpah cut his teeth on TV Westerns, but there's nothing family-friendly about this tale of an aging band of outlaws milling about the Texas-Mexico border in the 1910s and hoping for one last score. After some scene-setting and tension-building, the movie opens with a bang -- well, several bangs. We soon learn things aren't going so great for our gang of antiheroes, what with the leader's former partner now leading the pursuing posse. They don't get much better when the gang throws in with a sleazy Mexican general as a way to finally cash in and call it quits.

The cast is generally hailed as excellent, and I can't argue that. William Holden ("Damien: The Omen II"), apparently taking a role that many big names turned down, is the head of the crew, while Ernest Borgnine ("Airwolf") is his right-hand man. Robert Ryan ("I Married a Communist") is Holden's former partner leading a posse of nitwits, including the aforementioned Martin. Other well-known names include Warren Oates, Ben Johnson (not the disgraced sprinter), Edmond O'Brien and Alfonso Arau.

Pretty sold performances throughout, especially Holden and Ryan. The former strikes the right balance of weariness and hardassitude; "The Wild Bunch" usually is cited as the end of the classic Western, and was billed as showing "unchanged men in a changing land." Ryan, while having the less showy role, is just as good, doubly weary and worn down not only from being an old outlaw but from having the chase the guy he used to run with. Hell, he seemed to age another 20 years over the movie's two hours.

For some, though, the big thing about "Bunch" is the action and the editing. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of shooting, and on a grand scale. Beginning, middle, end ... bullets fly quite a bit, but in a decidedly messy, non-John Woo way. (Really, like Borgnine could fly through the air shooting two pistols at one time.)

Accentuating the bang-bang is a merciless series of quick cuts. According to IMDB, the average shot length is only three seconds -- and only one second during the climactic shootout. And they say today's filmmakers are all about the short attention spans.

Hard to say if this is the absolute best Western I've ever seen. I mean, there's "Young Guns II." But it's definitely solid, especially if you're into that whole "honor among thieves" thing. Heck, Peckinpah did such a good job, I'm almost tempted to rent "Convoy." Almost.