What are the main features of Peckinpah's style as a director? Consider the depiction of violence, the use of landscape, the relationship between the quests of the main characters and the everyday life that goes on all around them, and the way character is revealed through incident. What sort of mood(s) does Peckinpah create?
In what ways is this film a revision of the traditional Western? What elements of the Western, as it was established earlier in the twentieth century, does Peckinpah retain, what elements does he reject outright, and what elements does he keep, but reinterpret?
In what ways to Pat and Billy mirror one another, and in what ways are they different? What are their attitudes towards, and uses of, violence? Why does Pat determine to kill Billy? Is Pat a sellout? What makes him angry, and what does he accept? Is Billy a hopeless idealist, who is unable to understand how times have changed?
Why is the film set in 1881, which is rather late in the history of the American West? Why is the film framed by the killing of Pat Garrett, which is even later, in 1909? In addition, in what ways can the film be seen as an allegory of American society at the time that it was made (as opposed to the time in which it is set)?