Summer 2014 #3: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) - George Roy Hill

I can’t hide the fact that I’m not a fan of Westerns. They’re timeless and extremely important to the history of American cinema and even just history in general but most of the time they bore me to tears. As a genre they have some of the most recognizable and overplayed iconography and tropes, maybe next to the romcom. Probably the only Western I have ever deeply enjoyed is No Country For Old Men.

That being said, I watched this one because of its cultural significance and Paul Newman.

Sidenote, my viewing of this film happened a few weeks ago, so you could say I’m a little behind on my reviews.

So Paul Newman and Robert Redford play famous bank robbers (“yay at least they’re the bad guys, maybe this is more of a gangster flick” was my first thought). It technically could be read that way, since it’s about two struggling convicts running from the law before finally realizing that their way of life is disappearing along with them.

Batman and Robin style bank robbers doomed to have the law catch up to them, it’s not a horrible premise. The story is almost totally based on the true story of two American bank robbers who moved to Bolivia in 1901 to escape the law and became even more famous bank robbers. So you’d want to watch that, right? 

Well, I, along with Roger Ebert, did not enjoy the film. He describes the beginning as first rate, and then the second half as not so great. Of the dialogue, he says it is “so bad we can’t believe a word anyone says. And then the violent, bloody ending is also a mistake; apparently it was a misguided attempt to copy "Bonnie and Clyde….” we don’t believe it, and we walk out of the theater wondering what happened to that great movie we were seeing until an hour ago.“ The film won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and is listed by the Writers Guild of America as #11 in the 101 Greatest Screenplays Ever Written. I sense some weird disconnect here.

This is an obscure reference, but it’s sort of like the French film Les Valseuses, a 1974 Gérard Depardieu film about two friends who commit crimes without actually being "bad” guys. The two main characters, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, are sort of whimsical, their relationship is, from what I could tell, incredibly homoerotic, and they share a sexual relationship with a single woman on multiple occasions.

The problem comes when the film tries to be anything but a happy-go-lucky look at two convicts who are just barely decent at their jobs. 

Also the last act of the film takes place in Bolivia, and as an audience member I couldn’t care less about this plot. 

But now I’ve seen it, and no one can fault me for disliking it. The film ranks as #162 on the IMDb Top 250, and #73 on AFI’s 100 Films. It took more than a few glasses of wine to get through this one though.