Best of enemies. Deadliest of friends.


A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in Sam Peckinpah's final Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang between cattle rustlings, Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) ignores the advice of comrade-turned-lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) to escape to Mexico, and he winds up in jail in Lincoln, New Mexico. After Billy theatrically escapes, inspiring enigmatic Lincoln resident Alias (Bob Dylan) to join him, the governor (Jason Robards Jr.) and cattle baron Chisum (Barry Sullivan) requisition Garrett to form a posse and hunt him down. Rather than flee to Mexico when he can, Billy heads back to Fort Sumner, meeting his final destiny at the hands of his friend Pat, who, two decades later, is forced to face the consequences of his own Faustian pact with progress. With a script by Rudolph Wurlitzer, Peckinpah uses the historical basis of Billy's death to eulogize the West dreamily yet violently as it is desecrated by corrupt capitalists. Both Pat and Billy know that their time is passing, as surely as Garrett's posse knows that they are participating in a legend. Using familiar Western players like Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado, Peckinpah underscores the West's existence as a media myth, and he even appears himself as a coffin maker. Just as the bloodletting of Peckinpah's earlier The Wild Bunch (1969) invoked the Vietnam War, the casting of Kristofferson and Dylan alluded to the chaotic late '60s/early '70s present; the counterculture has little place in a corporate future. Also like The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett was truncated by its studio; the cuts did nothing to help its box office. Key scenes, particularly the framing story of Garrett's fate, have since been restored to the home-video version. In this director's cut, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid stands as one of Peckinpah's most beautiful and complex films, killing the Western myth even as he salutes it.

at Garrett and Billy the Kid is a 1973 American Western drama film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan. Written by Rudy Wurlitzer, the film is about an aging Pat Garrett, hired as a lawman by a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.[2]

Dylan composed several songs for the movie's score and soundtrack album Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, which was released the same year. Filmed on location in Durango, Mexico,[3] it was nominated for two BAFTA Awards for Film Music (Dylan) and Most Promising Newcomer (Kristofferson). It was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of Best Original Score (Dylan).[4]

The film was noted for behind-the-scenes battles between Peckinpah and the production company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Soon after completion, the film was taken away from the director and substantially re-edited, resulting in a truncated version released to theaters and largely disowned by cast and crew members. Peckinpah's preview version[Note 1] was released on video in 1988, leading to a re-evaluation, with many critics hailing it as a mistreated classic and one of the era's best films. It is ranked 126th on Empire magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.[5]

In 1988, Turner Home Entertainment, with distribution by MGM, released Peckinpah's preview version of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid on video and Laserdisc. This version led to a rediscovery and reevaluation of the film, with many critics praising it as a lost masterpiece and proof of Peckinpah's vision as a filmmaker at this time. The film's reputation has grown substantially since this version was released, and the film has come to be regarded as something of a modern classic, equal in many ways to Peckinpah's earlier films.[9] Kristofferson noted in an interview, though, that Peckinpah had felt Dylan had been pushed on him by the studio and thus left "Knocking on Heaven's Door" out of the preview version. In Kristofferson's opinion, "Heaven's Door" "was the strongest use of music that I had ever seen in a film. Unfortunately Sam ... had a blind spot there."[10]

In 2005, a DVD of the film distributed by Warner Brothers was released containing the preview version as well as a new special edition which combined elements of the theatrical version, the preview version, and several new scenes never released in the previous versions. This third version of the film, known as the "special edition", runs slightly shorter than the preview version.

Release Date: May 23, 1973


Distrib: MGM