WILD ROVERS (1971)

Lifelong ranch hand Ross Bodine decides cowpunching is no kind of life. So he and a raw cowboy half his age rob a bank to get the cash each needs to improve his lot. An indignant posse is soon in pursuit. Filmmaker Blake Edwards made his name with The Pink Panther and other comedies, but he also showed great skill in other genres with the thriller Experiment in Terror, the drama Days of Wine and Roses and this nuanced paean to the West. In performances perfectly matching Edwards' balance of rowdy comedy and hardscrabble period realism, William Holden and Ryan O'Neal play the fugitive saddlebums, with Holden drawing special praise. As he grows older, he grows better like a great old wine. All the reverberations from the previous roles are beginning to sound (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times).