A Note on Anti-Westerns

The western genre has many sub-genres, with the most popular being the spaghetti western. One sub-genre is the anti-western. A good anti-western tends to challenge the traditional westerns of the 50s and earlier. Anti-westerns focus both on fact rather than legend and morality. The most widely acknowledged anti-western is Clint Eastwood's 1992 film, Unforgiven. Despite Unforgiven's impact on the genre, The Wild Bunch is worthy of perhaps even more recognition. The Wild Bunch brought up the realism which causes the moral questions over two decades before Unforgiven. The Wild Bunch forces the viewer to ask themselves whether killing is justified in the situation at hand, or even if it is ever justified. The debate on whether taking another human being's life is right may seem a very deep subject for a film, but Peckinpah takes it on fearlessly. Despite Peckinpah's attempt at a moral challenge, many of his contemporaries nicknamed him "Bloody Sam", and his violence remains a controversy among film critics to this day.