I used to know this movie like the back of my hand. Unfortunately—and here’s a good case for never watching a movie more than twice in a single decade—I saw it so many times I eventually grew bored of it. That was right around the time I discovered The Wild Bunch, which made this film seem a little too sleek in comparison. Fast forward to my thirties and I’ve forgotten just enough of it to enjoy it again, but not quite love it.
Like many westerns, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is set in a time when the gunslinger is becoming obsolete. In The Wild Bunch, the main characters knew it the moment they laid eyes on their first car. In this film, Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) should have known it from the moment they acquired their first bike. After botching a train robbery, the duo realize the rules of the west have changed, but they didn’t get the memo.
Knowing there’s no way they’ll be able to survive if they continue their outlaw ways, Butch and Sundance find themselves at a crossroads. They reluctantly discuss their options around a table owned by Sundance’s patient love interest (Katharine Ross), who probably would have been Butch’s love interest if he’d been the one to meet her first. Butch, who’s always the know-it-all of the duo, suggests they should pack up and head for greener pastures in Bolivia. When they arrive, they find their destination is little more than abandoned farmland and dust.
There’s a reason William Goldman’s screenplay is analyzed to death in screenwriting classes. The story, which indulges in and pokes fun at the idea of myths and legends, has a lean simplicity to it. The banter is a not-very-distant ancestor to the kind of humorous dialogue that appears in Hollywood blockbusters as recent as The Force Awakens. The plot quickly establishes the main characters, the female lead, and the gang, whose leadership is hanging by a thread. It won’t be long until Butch and Sundance are on the run, chased down by an all-star team of man-hunters whose faces we never see.
The first half of the film deserves its classic status and then some. Unfortunately, the best scenes dry up in the second half. Everyone loves the long sequence of chase scenes in which they’re desperately trying to throw the unseen antagonists off their trail, crossing desert, rock, and water to do it. They occasionally pause to watch their pursuers from afar with an even mixture of dread and awe. “Who are those guys?” they ask repeatedly. Nothing else really compares until, of course, that iconic freeze frame at the end.
Despite its bottom-heaviness, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a hugely entertaining popcorn flick. That’s pretty much all I feel like saying about it at this point in my life, which is part of the reason I like movies so much—sometimes they change as much as I do. Maybe I’ll love it again the next time I see it, but I don’t plan on watching it again for a very long time.
The Goug' Blog 