Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

This was a fairly good film; it was not extraordinary in my opinion because westerns are on the lower end of genres I’m interested in. The performances of Paul Newman and Robert Redford were good. I kept thinking about “Brokeback Mountain” when there were scenes of intense chemistry between Paul and Robert; one scene in particular when they jump off a cliff into river rapids and are carried quickly down, while they are badgering each other about how they hate how the other drags them into crazy messes (oh brokeback).

This movie also reminded me a bit of Bonnie and Clyde because it is about a band of outlaws who rob banks. The difference is that Butch is about male companion and Bonnie and Clyde is about a heterosexual romance gone awry. Butch Cassidy the film is also not witty the same way B & C was. I shouldn’t judge these two completely side by side, but the fact that Butch Cassidy was released two years after B&C speaks a lot to me.

It was neat seeing Katherine Ross as Robert Redford’s main squeeze, the most notable film I know her from is The Graduate, so it was neat to see her in something else (note her character does not range far from her character in The Graduate).

Director George Roy Hill has done other mentionable films, none of which I’ve seen and actually don’t have a stinging desire to run out and request from the library.

Butch Cassidy is worth seeing because it’s a contemporary classic. There are a number of humourous scenes when Butch and Sundance are trying to rob Spanish banks, but of course they don’t know how to speak Spanish and experience miscommunication with their hostages while they are trying to collect their booty (yar, a pirate’s life, it is). And the famous scene where Butch and Sundance’s main squeeze go for a ride bike with Burt Bacharach’s “Rain Drops Keep Falling on my Head” as the soundtrack is definitely worth watching.