Paul Newman and Robert Redford set the standard for the “buddy film” with this box office smash set in the Old West. The Sundance Kid (Redford) is the frontier’s fastest gun. His sidekick, Butch Cassidy (Newman), is always dreaming up new ways to get rich fast. If only they could blow open a baggage car without also blowing up the money-filled safe inside… Or remember that Sundance can’t swim before they escape a posse by leaping off a cliff into rushing rapids… Times are changing in the west and life is getting tougher. So Butch and Sundance pack their guns, don new duds, and, with Sundance’s girlfriend (Katharine Ross), head down to Bolivia. Never mind that they don’t speak Spanish – they’ll manage somehow. A winner of four Academy Awards (including best screenplay and best song), here is a thoroughly enjoyable blend of fact and fancy done with true affection for a bygone era and featuring the two flashiest, friendliest funniest outlaws who ever called out “hands up!”This 1969 film has never lost its popularity or its unusual appeal as a star-driven Western that tinkers with the genre’s conventions and comes up with something both terrifically entertaining and–typical of its period–a tad paranoid. Paul Newman plays the legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy as an eternal optimist and self-styled visionary, conjuring dreams of banks just ripe for the picking all over the world. Robert Redford is his more levelheaded partner, the sharpshooting Sundance Kid. The film, written by William Goldman (The Princess Bride) and directed by George Roy Hill (The Sting), basically begins as a freewheeling story about robbing trains but soon becomes a chase as a relentless posse–always seen at a great distance like some remote authority–forces Butch and Sundance into the hills and, finally, Bolivia. Weakened a little by feel-good inclinations (a scene involving bicycle tricks and the song “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” is sort of Hollywood flower power), the movie maintains an interesting tautness, and the chemistry between Redford and Newman is rare. (A factoid: Newman first offered the Sundance part to Jack Lemmon.) –Tom Keogh
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March 14, 2008
#1
I watched this “classic” after hearing that it was such a good movie. Where’s the beef? I fell asleep half way through it, then forced myself to watch it.
Yes Redford and Newman are attractive, and in other movies they are superb actors, but this movie just did not move me.
March 14, 2008
#2
Despite by being over 50 years old, I had never seen this movie before so I was actually looking forward to finally experiencing it.
Talk about style over substance…
I kept on saying to myself “what’s the point…?”
What was the point of the bicycle scene (except to promote B.J. Thomas’s “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”?)
What was the point of that ridiculous New York montage sequence?
This film was too cute, too pretentious, and too vapid.
I guess I wasn’t missing anything these past few decades.
I can see how it could appeal to adolescent sensibilities, though.
March 14, 2008
#3
I saw this movie recently and was surprised at how completely unwatchable it was. Robert Redford and Paul Newman mug their way through the action from start to finish, looking much more like self-conscious movie stars than train robbers or gun-slingers of the old west.
“Butch and Sundance” is not completely without interest to the casual observer of American cultural sensibilities, however. The most significant moment in the film by far is the scene where Paul rides his bicycle around a barnyard, flashing his legendary grin for all the world to see. As the dream-like Katherine Ross gazes at him adoringly, we hear B.J. Thomas sing Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” As I watched this taking place, I realized that I was witnessing the birth of the 1970s.
In spite of such curiosities, “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” is quite simply one of the most overrated Hollywood films of all time. If you want to see an excellent film from that era about “the old west,” I would suggest you get a copy of Robert Altman’s “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.”
March 14, 2008
#4
It seems to me that this film wants to please all ways it can use. Is it a comedy or is it not? There is no feeling of old west, because the main persons are very modern. I don’t understand the meaning of “Raindrops” -ballad in between. It makes everything even more unreal. Actors are good and it is very well done, but I have no feelings for it. I do not care criminals as heroes which makes it impossible to identify. Randoph Scott westerns beat this any day!
March 14, 2008
#5
I saw this movie in the theatre when it came out back in the late sixties and laughed till I cried.Watched it when I got the dvd and was totally bored with it.Goes to show how your taste in movies changes over the years.It is still a classic all time great movie-I just couldn’t sit thru it 40 years later.