“He gave his word!!”
”That’s not what counts!! It’s who you give it to!!”
Senseless, gratuitous violence without sentimentality. But sentiments are the enemy of ethics, and this movie is very concerned about ethics.
Outlaws may be free, but those motivated by their basest desires will always be reliable pawns for the regimes of power, and so the usual Western battle between Good and Evil is here replaced by the much less inspiring battle between Capital and Autocracy. The film follows world-weary crooks on a demoralizing journey, increasingly emphasizing how empty and meaningless their lives have become, until it finally culminates in an explosion of todestrieb that would inspire Tarantino to make Inglorious Basterds almost half a century later.
It’s notable that throughout the film, Peckinpah turns the lens on the children witnessing and emulating these acts of violence: their innocence is another casualty of the eternal plunder. These men are not only wasting their own lives and killing bystanders, they’re killing the future. This grim, materialistic perspective on the West was reviled upon its release, but it’s finally caught up to the present. This is America.