Review of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) by Blake B — 14 Jul 2009

I haven't seen a lot of Robert Redford or Paul Newman, but the little I have seen of them I really like. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid is a superb western with two great actors. There's a lot of great humor and action throughout the film. My favorite parts are when they're trying to learn how to speak just enough Spanish to rob banks in Bolivia. It's hilarious and it's not often that you see that kind of effort from bank robbers in westerns. The locales are at times breathtaking and paint a nice picture of the time.

Redford and Newman have a very natural chemistry in this movie, as they do in The Sting. It's overall a great friendship movie set in the old west (but times are changing, as we see with the introduction of the bicycle and the growing presence of "those guys" (the Pinkertons)). The ending is sad but somewhat fitting for the lives they've chosen to lead, and is there any other movie that does the going-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory better? I can't think of one that comes to mind.

It took me the longest time to get up the attention and intrigue to ever watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, because I grew up with a warped idea that movies before 1975 couldn't possibly be cool, or even good. I love it when movies like this make me wish I'd abandoned that thinking earlier. It's very entertaining and a must-see as a western, and maybe even as a straight comedy. I thoroughly enjoyed it (I can't yet decide, though, if I like this or The Sting better).