In
between, The Wild Bunch presents coffin nails for every single thing sacred in the western genre: its heroes are broken - down,
paunchy, exhausted, and driven by the wrong things; its whores are nasty; and its bloodshed is excessive and unconscionable.3 Other New American westerns could only pretend at this picture's level of absolute obscenity; like Apocalypse Now, it wasn't a movie about Vietnam — it was Vietnam.