Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid Review

El Newburger

April 21, 2022

I personally did not enjoy this film. I thought it was somewhat stupid. There is an interesting plot and it is compelling in the way that you don’t know who is going to live and who is going to die; although that seems to be the only exciting part for me. The way this movie was filmed and directed irritated me, one of the biggest factors being the long chase scenes, although the cinematography is quite pretty. The length of the film composed of photos to show Butch, Sundance and Etta traveling to Bolivia was confusing. I think it’s a bit odd to have these long chase scenes which not much occurring and then tightly comprise a long period of time in photos. As the viewer I would’ve wanted to see more about their travels. We are introduced to the idea of Butch and Sundance going to Bolivia early in the film so, for lack of better words it seems idiotic to not include any information about that.

Yes this is a Western film, and it’s meant to be a tribute of western films so it must be that western films are not for me. As exciting as they come off to be, I got rather bored during this film. The first review I read was written by Roger Ebert. In his review about the film he says, “…This good movie is buried beneath millions of dollars that were spent on “production values” that wreck the show.” I one hundred percent agree with this, the producers spent $6 million on this film and getting Paul Newman which is shown, cinematically this film is beautiful but the money they spent on these factors could’ve been used much more effectively. Granted this movie made $102.3 million.

“Director George Roy Hill apparently spent a lot of money to take his company on location for these scenes, and I guess when he got back to Hollywood he couldn’t bear to edit them out of the final version. So the Super-posse chases our heroes unceasingly, until we’ve long since forgotten how well the movie started and are desperately wondering if they’ll ever get finished riding up and down those endless hills. And once bogged down, the movie never recovers.” This quote from Roger Ebert’s review perfectly sums up how I feel about this movie. Most of the budget was spent on Paul Newman and going on location and not enough time spent on editing and such.

One of the confusing parts of the film, that Ebert points out as well, is that this movie is set in 1910 and they have a much more modern dialect. Throughout the movie I kept thinking about when this movie is supposed to take place and I often forget that it was set in 1910. You’d think that since the producers and directors spent so much money on this film they would’ve moved some of it around for this movie to actually make sense. Why go through all the trouble of going on location and hiring a very expensive actor then not telling your actors so add a little tang to their accent? It can be so satisfying when actors learn the accent or dialect of a certain time or place to add to their character; for me personally it pulls me into their world even more. This movie didn’t have that, so it wasn’t as compelling.

On the other side of this I found the comedic parts of the movie quite enjoyable. When Butch and Sundance are learning Spanish and have difficulty conducting the bank tellers and townspeople during their robbery; that was amusing. The second article I read about Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid was much more in favor of this being a generally good movie. This review by Whitney Williams published by Variety in 1969 saw the film in a kiddie light. “A lighthearted treatment of a purportedly-true story of the two badmen who made Wyoming outlaw history.” Viewing this film in a more childish lens, with the share of violence is much more appealing to me. I could see myself possibly enjoying the movie as a younger individual, the comedic parts are a fun aspect to the movie and the constant need to run, loot and rob aid to make this a childish silly movie.

My final opinion of this movie is this, I wouldn’t watch it again unless I was really bored and couldn’t find anything else to watch. I don’t like it but it’s not terrible. There are pros and cons to this movie; as there are to any movie. Pros being the cinematography, the color grading, the little incorporations of comedy and the generally silly lighthearted aspect of this movie. The cons being, the extremely long chase scenes, the modern dialect used by characters who live in 1910, the use of this film’s budget and the fact that this is a western film. Overall I rate this movie two out of five stars.

Sources: Ebert, Roger. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Movie Review (1969): Roger Ebert.” Movie Review (1969) | Roger Ebert, John Foreman, 13 Oct. 1969, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/butch-cassidy-and-the-sundance-kid-1969 Williams, Whitney. “Film Review: ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ with Paul Newman, Robert Redford.” Variety, Variety, 10 Sept. 1969, https://variety.com/1969/film/reviews/butch-cassidy-and-the-sundance-kid-1200422010/