Sam Peckinpah's landmark, controversial Western follows an aging gang of outlaws, led by William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, staging one last score along the Mexican border as their era of lawlessness dies around them. Its balletic, blood-drenched slow-motion violence redefined how screen carnage was staged and stirred fierce debate. Elegiac and brutal, it is widely hailed as one of the greatest and most influential Westerns ever made, a mournful requiem for the Old West.