They Came Too Late & Stayed Too Long
Westerns rarely come as good, or aspire to the heights of genuine Elizabethan tragedy, as this closet gay tale of loyalty among men who have nothing else to offer one another.
This is a Darwinian tale of men out of time whose thwarted masculinity refuses to change and, thus, they must die; the machine gun here symbolizing the advance of a soulless culture, without adventure - as does the fact that the police here are shown to be just as prone to criminality as the outlaws.
Director Sam Peckinpah is a genius who tells stories visually with minimum dialogue.
As in Shakespearean tragedy, death is the only consummation devoutly to be wished for these men-without-women. ‘Let’s go!’ is repeated throughout, yet these characters have nowhere to go. These men can only find redemption through death, without which their lives would be completely meaningless.
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