- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is probably the most famous "lighthearted" Western, and there are some good reasons for that. The most obvious is that the leading men, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, constituted one of the most charming actor pairings in history. How could you not like those two, even when they're playing bank robbers? Another reason is that the movie has a few genuinely inspired moments. In one such scene, Butch (Newman) and Sundance (Redford) sit on the balcony of a brothel listening to a local lawman struggle to raise a posse to catch them. In another memorable pair of scenes, the two outlaws try to talk a dedicated bank employee into surrendering the safe without getting himself blown up. And then there's the film's best sequence, in which Butch and Sundance are relentlessly pursued by a dedicated team of unknown riders ("Who are those guys?") who seem to have a preternatural gift for tracking them. But then there's also those extended photo montage sequences and the musical stylings of Burt Bacharach. Wait, what?
- Although painfully tangential scenes like the film's famous bicycle ride to the sound of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" occasionally pop up to derail the film's narrative, I think a deeper problem with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid arises from its completely incoherent message. The audience is obviously meant to identify with Butch and Sundance during their lives, but how does the film want us to feel about their violent deaths? Sundance's girlfriend Etta (Katharine Ross) obviously dreads the inevitable outcome of their continued larceny, but the men themselves aren't sufficiently introspective to be convincing tragic characters. Perhaps a clue is provided when Butch and Sundance are discovered by the authorities in precisely the same manner as the deplorable "stinkin' badges" banditos from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? If so, that's a strangely mixed set of messages. Oh, well. Maybe I'm overthinking a silly buddy picture.
- This was Sam Elliott's feature film debut, which was unexpected.
