Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Starring James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Jaeckel, R. G. Armstrong, John Beck, Bob Dylan, Slim Pickens, Jason Robards, Barry Sullivan, Charles Martin Smith, Matt Clark, Jack Elam, Rita Coolidge, Harry Dean Stanton, Richard Bright, Katy Jurado. [R]

No less than a half-dozen editors toiled to find the shape and meaning behind Peckinpah’s last true Western, and they ended up finding a mood but not a movie. (Several different versions of varying lengths have been released; I’ve seen the version originally released to theaters, and the 1988 “preview” edit that most closely resembles the director’s final cut before the studio “removed him” from the process.) In an early film role for the country star, Kristofferson is too old to be playing Billy the Kid, unruly in action but not in nature—his “legend” resists elegy—but Coburn finds subtle depth and melancholy in a remarkable performance as Pat Garrett, the former outlaw who turned on his friend for the sake of survival. For all of the film’s attempts—some successful, some less so—to find the lyricism in mortality, the betrayal of values and persons, and the life choices that make escaping death impossible, the narrative is little more than a series of episodes, hazy in chronology, geography and population, and the viewer is cast adrift in repetitive setups and conclusions (almost always with someone or someones getting gunned down). The overflowing supporting cast is filled with a lot of famous faces and character actors, but nearly all of them are reduced to cameos with little to do during their limited screentime. Co-star Bob Dylan composed the music; the best-known song to come out of it, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, isn’t heard with the lyrics in all versions.

57/100