They? The above is a line that Warren Oates as Benny delivers after one of the villains in suits calls him a loser. It's one of many dialogic gems in this volatile film, which vies with Straw Dogs as Sam Peckinpah's greatest movie of the 1970s. The title is so in your face that you expect a non-stop bloodbath but Peckinpah's after something else here, something that few directors or audiences have had the backbone to deal with. He takes a main character who looks, acts, and dresses like a loser in so many ways, and makes him human, vulnerable, tragic, and somehow moral in a world full of ruthless men corrupted by their almost absolute power. You know from the start that the movie won't end prettily, yet with Peckinpah at the helm, Oates in the male lead and the ravishing Isela Vega his doomed companion, a host of great character actors sinking their teeth into the rotting meat of their roles, and a vision of Mexico conveyed in stark but lyrical images, you have to take the ride with Benny all the way to the bitter end. In quantity of killings, this is not very violent as Peckinpah films go, certainly not close to The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett, or Cross of Iron. But the mood is so somber and bleak that it will test the strongest viewer threshold. There is also the trademark sly Peckinpah humor throughout, whistling through the graveyard with a bottle of tequila in