Pat Garrett (James Coburn) used to be part of Billy the Kid's (Kris Kristofferson) outlaw gang but when he takes a job as Sheriff, it puts him on the opposite side of the law. He tries to balance the betrayal by half-heartedly pursuing but when his corporate sponsors put a minder on him in the form of Poe (John Beck), Garrett has to show results.
This is a very good Western but it's a Sam Peckinpah Western, which means it's deeply misanthropic and nostalgic for a hyper-violent past that romanticizes anarchy and calls it freedom. Which is not to say I don't agree with him. Garrett's "law" is basically a forerunner of today's ultra-capitalist cops that protect and serve monetary interests over human ones.
Garrett and Judas are both selling out a friend, but Judas did it to protect the status quo because he feared violent reprisal and Garrett did it to secure a future of comfort in a land rapidly being forced into conformity. Both had a heaping spoonful of jealousy and love mixed in to make it all spiky and conflicted.
Pat Garrett works better than JCS because Peckinpah was absolutely not interested in criticism and made his Jesus stand-in a multiple murderer with no compunction while Norman Jewison panicked and tried to censor Rock Star Jesus to appease people and ended up just neutering his art.
You can find a full copy on YouTube but I couldn't hear any of the dialogue and the subtitles/closed captions were only in Spanish so I broke down and rented it from Amazon.
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