Sam Peckinpah’s cycle of genre-redefining westerns came to a close with this blood- and dust-caked elegy for the American West, which marries his renegade style with a fatalistic sense of finality. As newly minted lawman Pat Garrett (Coburn) stalks the outlaw Billy the Kid (Kristofferson) across the plains, their old friendship is twisted into rivalry, and mythic ideals of freedom come up against an emerging ruling-class order—all to the strains of a haunting soundtrack by Bob Dylan (who also appears as the mercurial Alias). PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID stands as perhaps the maverick auteur’s richest, most mature work, a world-weary ballad that bears the solemn weight of history passing into legend. – Criterion Collection