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Passion & Poetry: The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah

Definitive, exhaustive, and overlong

Leading Peckinpah savant Mike Siegel clearly invested a lot of time and love into this documentary on the life and times of the bad-boy director; growing up in Fresno, his early TV work, taking off with classics like Ride the High Country, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and The Getaway, and then down again thanks to coke and booze, ultimately reduced to shooting music videos for the likes of Julian Lennon.

Siegel finished it in 2005, but it hasn’t seen a movie screen until now, in Japan. Definitive, exhaustive and, it must be said, overlong at two hours for anyone who’s not a true fan of the man. Japanese title: Sam Peckinpah: Jyonetsu to Bigaku. (115 min)