Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Paul Newman was at the height of his stardom when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released in 1969. The film was a mammoth hit, won some Oscars, and established itself as a perennial favorite of many movie fans. The script, by William Goldman, has many catch-phrase lines, such as "Who are those guys?", "Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?," and "The fall will probably kill you."

Directed by George Roy Hill, the film is an interesting concoction--a Western set in the last days of the Old West, but with a strong contemporary vibe. Though none of the dialogue is anachronistic, it has the snap of modern pictures, and the music is distinctly pop. In fact, the music plays a huge role in the movie, as there are three montage sequences set to the music of Burt Bacharach, the most notable being Newman and Katherine Ross playing around on a bicycle to the tune of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head."

Newman stars as Butch Cassidy, and Robert Redford as his outlaw partner, the Sundance Kid. Newman was the big star then, while Redford was still on the up and come. He was not the first choice to play the role--Steve McQueen eventually dropped out over disagreements about billing, and Newman offered the role to Jack Lemmon, who passed because he didn't like riding horses. Imagining Lemmon in the role of the taciturn fastest gun in the West makes the head spin a little.

The plot concerns the last days of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. Cassidy and Sundance were among the last celebrated outlaws of the Old West, and modern life pushes them to the margins. When they hit the Union Pacific one too many times, special lawmen were hired to track them down, and the boys realize they'll always be hunted, so along with Ross, Sundance's gal, they decamp to Bolivia to rob banks. They are finally cornered after a robbery, and shoot it out with the Bolivian army, the film ending in a freeze-frame as the two bandits rush forward, guns blazing, into legend.

I've seen this film many times, and it's charm rarely ebbs. It's the kind of movie you can see over and over again, because with familiarity comes pleasure, whether it's the lines--"Rules? In a knife fight?" or the comic timing between Redford and Newman. Hill worried that the film would be too funny--he wasn't out to make a comedy, though that's the film's greatest selling point. Some of the film doesn't work anymore--a role-played rape between Redford and Ross early in the picture, before we know they're a couple, is profoundly distasteful.

As with Cool Hand Luke, the photography is by Conrad Hall, and it's dazzling. I think the freeze-frame ending is one of the most ingenious strokes. Some say that Butch survived and returned to America, and though that's highly unlikely it's nice to contemplate. By Hill not showing the actual outcome, only an implied one, it keeps the characters perpetually alive.