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Reviews
Convoy (1978)
Even "The Osterman Weekend" and "Killer Elite" are much better
The best directors make terrible movies sometimes (check out Spielberg). This is absolutely the worst Peckinpah movie imaginable. The camera and the editing are o.k., but apart from that everything is terrible. Almost the complete cast is hopeless, the story is silly, the characters are weak... And who cares about trucks and their drivers, when they are shown like they are in this movie?
Ride the High Country (1962)
old men and new west
This early work is the proof that Peckinpah was capable of making a quality movie without using graphic violence. After his promising debut with "The Deadly Companions" "Ride the high Country" became Sam´s first masterpiece. The plot develops the standard themes of Peckinpah movies. It´s about friendship, trust, betrayal, the aging of men, the rise of modern times etc. In the beginning you think it´s just a pretty conventional western about ageing heroes with some unusual assets and locations (the camel and the chinese restaurant), but when we enter Knudsen´s farm the mood of the film immediately becomes darker and it´s getting really wild, almost hysterical, when we reach coarse gold (a place as terrible as Agua Verde in "The Wild Bunch") and get to know the Hammond Brothers (who are as terrible as the carpenters in "Straw Dogs").
The camera and the editing of the movie are great (I bet,Leone liked the showdown) and the cast is very good. Scott and McCrea are perfect for their roles and the Hammond Brothers are really scary. L.Q. Jones has an incredible death scene and Warren Oates is really, really mean. There´s only one thing I don´t really like in this movie: The way Peckinpah handles the love story. The acting of Starr and Hartley is so old-fashioned! It would be o.k. if this was a forties-movie, but in an early sixties movie that is fairly modern except for that, it just doesn´t work. 8/10
The Getaway (1972)
Overrated
There are two Peckinpah Movies almost everybody knows and seems to like. The Wild Bunch and The Getaway. The first one is truly one of the greatest movies in history, whilst the latter is... good. Some of the sequences are really excellent, the camera works well, the story is not new but fairly interesting. The biggest problem of the film is it´s cast. McQueen is o.k., but no Eastwood or Coburn and McGraw was truly not the best actress around. Al Lettieri is terrible as the main villain of the movie. Peckinpahs stock actors Ben Johnson and Slim Pickens are good as always, but Johnson dies too early and Pickens just shows up for a short dialouge. Apart from that there aren´t any other flaws, except that Peckinpah made some better movies. 7/10