Wild Bill and the Duty to Retreat

Wild Bill Hickok

By this date in history, the Year of Our Lord 2023, one might think that the story of the domestication of the Old American West would be settled, and certainly the recent attempts of Hollywood to continue the film genre seem mired in mediocre evocations of the past. The western genre is generally thought to have ended it’s run forty years ago--that is, the 1970s, which saw several revisionist films beginning with Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) and continuing with a long requiem that could be said to have ended with Clint Eastwood’s  Unforgiven (1992). These are generally supposed to represent the end game of the genre’s century long run, with the final bugle call being sounded by the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men (2007), when the old-time western sheriff--as sweet and sentimental a figure as your grandmother--confronts contemporary drug cartels and finds himself outmanned and outgunned.

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