Betrayal is the secondary theme of '' The Wild Bunch '' . The characters suffer from their knowledge of having betrayed a friend and left him to his fate , thus violating their own honor code when it suits them ( " $ 10,000 cuts an awful lot of family ties " ) . However , Bishop says , " When you side with a man , you stay with him , and if you ca n't do that you 're like some animal . " Such oppositional ideas lead to the film 's violent conclusion , as the remaining men find their abandonment of Angel intolerable . Bishop remembers his betrayals , most notably when he deserts Deke Thornton ( in flashback ) when the law catches up to them and when he abandons Crazy Lee at the railroad office after the robbery ( ostensibly to guard the hostages ) . Critic David Weddle writes that , " like that of Conrad 's '' Lord Jim '' , Pike Bishop 's heroism is propelled by overwhelming guilt and a despairing death wish . " Vincent Canby began his review by calling the film " very beautiful and the first truly interesting American-made Western in years . It 's also so full of violence — of an intensity that can hardly be supported by the story — that it 's going to prompt a lot of people who do not know the real effect of movie violence ( as I do not ) to write automatic condemnations of it . " He observed , " Although the movie 's conventional and poetic action sequences are extraordinarily good and its landscapes beautifully photographed ... it is most interesting in its almost jolly account of chaos , corruption , and defeat " . About the actors , he commented particularly on William Holden : " After years of giving bored performances in boring movies , Holden comes back gallantly in '' The Wild Bunch '' . He looks older and tired , but he has style , both as a man and as a movie character who persists in doing what he 's always done , not because he really wants the money but because there 's simply nothing else to do . " '' TIME '' also liked Holden 's performance , describing it as his best since '' Stalag 17 '' ( a 1953 film that earned Holden an Oscar ) , noting Robert Ryan gave " the screen performance of his career " , and concluding that " '' The Wild Bunch '' contains faults and mistakes " ( such as flashbacks " introduced with surprising clumsiness " ) , but " its accomplishments are more than sufficient to confirm that Peckinpah , along with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn , belongs with the best of the newer generation of American filmmakers . " In a 2002 retrospective Roger Ebert , who " saw the original version at the world premiere in 1969 , during the golden age of the junket , when Warner Bros. screened five of its new films in the Bahamas for 450 critics and reporters " , said that back then he had publicly declared the film a masterpiece during the junket 's press conference , prompted by comments from " a reporter from the '' Reader 's Digest '' who got up to ask ' Why was this film ever made ? ' " He compared the film to '' Pulp Fiction '' : " praised and condemned with equal vehemence . " " What '' Citizen Kane '' was to movie lovers in 1941 , '' The Wild Bunch '' was to cineastes in 1969 , " wrote film critic Michael Sragow , who added that Peckinpah had " produced an American movie that equals or surpasses the best of Kurosawa : the Gotterdammerung of Westerns "
earned Holden an Oscar
26th Academy Awards
The Wild Bunch