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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 2456
Released: January 10, 2006 |
| Our Price: $5.60 |
| Used Price: $5.27 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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| Features:
Closed-captioned Color DVD Special Edition Subtitled Widescreen NTSC | |
Editorial Review:
Movie DVD
Description of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Two-Disc Special Edition):
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid may be the most beautiful and ambitious film that Sam Peckinpah ever made. The time is 1881. Powerful interests want New Mexico tamed for their brand of progress, and Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is commissioned to rid the territory of his old gunfighting comrades. He serves fair notice to William Bonney--Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson)--and his Fort Sumter cronies, but it's not in their nature, or his, to go quietly. Peckinpah's theme, more than ever, is the closing of the frontier and the nature of the loss that that entails. But this time his vision takes him beyond genre convention, beyond history and legend, to the bleeding heart of myth--and surely of himself.
This is one strange and original movie. In 1973 most American reviewers responded by panning it and deriding its director, whom they saw as having betrayed the promise of Ride the High Country, been swept up in his own cult of violence, and become incoherent as a storyteller. Coherence wasn't helped by MGM's cutting at least a quarter-of-an-hour out of the finished film and removing a bitter, retrospective prelude. Subsequent releases have restored a lot of material, and now there's more widespread appreciation of the depth and power of Peckinpah's achievement.
The cast, teeming with fine character actors, is extraordinary, making the gallery of frontier denizens vivid and resonant. Coburn's Garrett, a man who comes to loathe himself for his mission yet cannot abandon it, is the high-water mark of the actor's career. L.Q. Jones, Luke Askew, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Elam, and Richard Bright create indelible moments, and Slim Pickens becomes the center of an unforgettably moving scene. The presence of Kristofferson (just starting out as an actor) and Bob Dylan (whose enigmatic role is nearly wordless) nudges us toward recognizing Old West outlawry as an early form of rock stardom--flesh-and-blood gods for a primitive society to feed on. --Richard T. Jameson
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Two-Disc Special Edition) Reviews:
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 
2009-11-08 - I had heard so much about this movie and love the music that Bob Dylan wrote for it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some of my favorite actors were in it, and I've always loved Westerns. But for me personally, the best part was getting to see Bob act and to see the scenes that he wrote the music for.
A genuine masterpiece!
2009-10-24 - Pat Garrett's director cut was the last Western of Sam Peckinpah. In certain way, this entry was an honor debt for this unforgettable. To get close to the most famed duel the West reminded.
The implacable prosecution of Garrett behind Billy's traces, the double moral when Billy reminds Garrett was on the other side of the law. The badge marks the difference.
The script depicts the Faustian attitude of Garrett when he decides to join forces with the Governor and entrepreneurs before the imminent changes to come in the far West. They need security for the investments, and so the pact is done. So, Garrett has signed his own sentence's death when he is ambushed in 1909.
The visual metaphor of the kids playing with in the gibbet and finally when the child throws a stone to Garrett remits us to the key sequence in "The wild bunch" , when a childish crowd plays with a scorpion, to emblematize the violent environment. On the other hand, the use of the violence's aesthetic in Peckinpah is now a personal and unsurpassed landmark, so many times imitated but never equaled (Quentin Tarantino has been influenced by Peckinpah, for instance)
James Coburn is over the top as the ruthless Garrett, he lives with astonishing realism every single movement, act or word. He breaths into the personage with such brilliant intensity that it should not surprise us he would be the cynical personage in "Cross of iron" from 1976.
A very detailed and complete portrait of this well known confrontation. Don't miss it.
Knockin' on Heaven's Door 
2009-06-16 - I bought this mainly because of Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door. Not a bad movie with a great cast of character actors.
Keep the change Bob
2009-06-02 - Just a great western flick to watch from time to time... Almost historically accurate... artistic license covers that. Billy the Kid was a little guy, thats why he had to fight well, so Kris is the artistic tangent... other than that, I didn't know Bob Dylan was that old...
pat garret & billy the kid
2009-04-28 - I first saw this movie when it came out some thirty years ago. I wanted to share it with my daughter recently who is into Bob Dylan. When I watched it again I was really intrigued by the sound track & scenes. Dylan
was young & funny without trying to be. Kristofferson was cool. A great revisit to a time gone by. Classic film!!
