Pat Garrett & Bill The Kid is showing on TCM on Thursday the 23rd April at 2.50am 

Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer

Starring James Coburn (Pat Garrett), Kris Kristofferson (Billy), Bob Dylan (Alias)

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is the end of things: the end of a friendship; the end of a man; and the end of a way of life. And for director Sam Peckinpah it was the end too – the last western from the man who had transformed the genre with The Wild Bunch (1969). Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is a death song – and it is beautiful.

Beginning in Los Cruces, Mexico in 1909 with the shooting of an aged Garrett (Coburn) the film then punches back to 1881 where Billy the Kid (Kristofferson) takes target practice on some live chickens. His old friend Garrett arrives, newly made sheriff of Lincoln County, and tells the Kid that the old ways are finished. The corporations are taking over the country – gonna make it civilised.

“The elective want you gone – out of the country,” warns Garrett.
“Are they tellin me or askin me?”
“I’m askin you,” says Garrett. “But in five days I’m makin you.”

And so it goes. Garrett hunts the Kid, and along the way both men encounter a nation breathing its last breath. Old friends die in the streets and enemies are sent to hell in a hail of bullets. Writer Rudy Wurlitzer’s (Two Lane Blacktop) narrative becomes a series of sombre vignettes, each emphasized by Peckinpah with the appearance of a movie star from the West’s glory days. There’s Jack Elam, Luke Askew and Emilio Fernandez to name a few. These men remind us of what the Western used to be, and what we’ve lost.

Slim Pickens cameos as a paunchy sheriff enlisted to help Garrett round up some of Billy’s gang. But in the following gun battle he is gut shot and staggers away to a nearby river. Here he sits, looking across the water, his eyes scared like a child’s. Like Garrett alls we can do is watch. It is a moment that transcends cinema.

Yet despite the endless shootouts the film is more than just a simple bloodbath. Peckinpah’s film is slow and mournful, often beautifully shot at sundown. As Billy rides towards his inevitable conclusion, he is silhouetted by a pink sky, with his reflection shimmering in the clear water under his horse’s hooves. Bob Dylan’s lyrical score is also note perfect, emphasising the story as a tone poem. Then there’s Coburn.

One of the finest actors of his generation, Coburn’s Garrett is elegiac; a man worn down and beaten by the fight. Surviving’s all he cares about:

“This countries getting old and I’m to get old with it.”

But by selling out to the Santa Fe Ring he has killed the best part of himself. Garrett is dead on the inside – his soul blackened. He dresses all in black – like a pallbearer. With bloodshot eyes he looks for solace in liquor, the law and scores of prostitutes, but can’t find it anywhere. The killing of the Kid is just another nail in his coffin.

And the Kid is everything Garrett was. He’s in his heart free- free of fences and the law. In this film he shines with life and his last act is to make love. Kristofferson plays him like what he is: a beautiful rock legend – a glimmering star.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is not perfect and falls short of being the masterpiece of The Wild Bunch. It’s uneven and occasional meanders. Peckinpah’s drinking was getting out of hand and the film was initially butchered by MGM.

But then that is why its here – after dark. A flawed work of genius steeped in the kind of fatalism Peckinpah was obviously feeling at the time. It is a death song to the western and the genre has never been the same since. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is the end of things.

PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is showing on TCM on Thursday the 23rd April at 2.50am 

NOTE: This review is taken from the 1988 Turner re-release and not the original theatrical version