The Wild Bunch directed by Sam Peckinpah, is a Western film about an aging outlaw gang at the Texas-Mexico border trying to exist in the modern world of supposedly 1913. The film was controversial because of its violence and the portrayal of the crude men trying to survive the era.

The Wild Bunch is noted for intricate, multi-angle editing, using normal and slow motion images, a revolutionary cinema technique in 1969. The writing of Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner, and Sam Peckinpah was nominated for a best-screenplay Academy Award; Jerry Fielding's music was nominated for Best Original Score; director Peckinpah was nominated for an Outstanding Directorial Achievement award by the Directors Guild of America; and cinematographer Lucien Ballard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography.