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Sometimes it takes a bullet three decades to reach its destination, thus the prologue intercutting target-practice in 1881 and an ambush in 1909 for an editing maneuver to tickle Eisenstein. Civilization bought and sold, the untamed country yielding to "growing investments and political interests," no room for anarchic forces like Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson). His former compadre Pat Garrett (James Coburn) gets a badge and tracks him down, what does it feel like to sell out? "It, uh, feels like times have changed." Sam Peckinpah's The Magnificent Ambersons, just as mutilated and full of phantoms and obsessed with growing old. The outlaw's capture in the besieged cabin acknowledges Jodorowsky, his revenge on the zealous deputy (R.G. Armstrong) outdoes Penn, his escape introduces Bob Dylan's quizzical Alias. ("Alias what?" "Alias anything you please.") The interrupted retirement of the sheriff (Slim Pickens) takes a moment to note his unfinished boat, mortally wounded he lumbers to the river's edge to finish bleeding under the resigned gaze of his tough wife (Katy Jurado), the film's sublimest passage. (Its wackiest sequence finds Garrett baiting a bandit in a general store while mangy Chill Wills has his hat pulled over his eyes and Dylan reads the contents of shelves aloud: "Spinach... climax tobacco... fine quality tomatoes...") General Wallace (Jason Robards) offers a toast to capitalism, and to "some greater design" hinted at by rainy New Mexico nights. A treasure trove of leathery mugs, Harry Dean Stanton and Elijah Cook Jr., Gene Evans and Emilio Fernández, Jack Elam Biblically bearded and gunned down in a duel of ten paces, "I never could count." The mournful executioner allows his prey one last roll with Rita Coolidge, to keep on living is his punishment. Folkloric, expansive, fractured, profoundly sad, Peckinpah's matchless dirge. "You handled a crude situation with remarkable skill." Eastwood (Unforgiven) takes it from there. Cinematography by John Coquillon. With Richard Jaeckel, Matt Clark, Barry Sullivan, Paul Fix, L.Q. Jones, Dub Taylor, Luke Askew, John Beck, Richard Bright, Charles Martin Smith, Aurora Clavel, and Rutanya Alda.
--- Fernando F. Croce |