Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is built on a lovely idea: what if the famed American outlaws could have attended their own wakes, smiling at each other the whole time, even as they sensed the end drawing near? William Goldman's screenplay follows Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) in the final years and months of their lives, painting them as a pair of handsome, sturdy young palm trees in the Old West, out of place and swaying in whatever direction the dusty wind happens to be blowing...but never breaking. That is, until the very end.

Sure, in one sense, the story is predictable: there are train robberies, bank robberies, a few shoot-outs, and of course a girl, but in Goldman's typical style of dissecting a story even as he's telling it, this movie is really about the Old West collapsing under its own notoriety. Celebrity gets Butch and Sundance out of a lot of hairy situations in this movie, but it also puts a big pair of targets on their backs and ultimately costs them their lives.

Goldman intelligently paints the death of the Old West as both mythology and Hollywood product through a series of self-reflexive vignettes. For instance, when Butch is challenged by one of his Hole in the Wall gang members over who should be leader, he asserts his authority not through a gun draw, but by having a third member of the gang read out loud a newspaper clipping describing Butch as the gang's leader. If the newspaper says it, it must be true, right? The gang doesn't buy Butch's argument, but it's certainly a novel way to make a point.

Even the first scene in the film is about an "almost" gun draw that seems to promise bloodshed, but never delivers. A card player accuses another player of cheating, only to stand down immediately when he realizes he's facing the notoriously quick draw Butch Cassidy. As if poking fun at those used to the ultra-violence of Peckinpah and Arthur Penn, director George Roy Hill and Goldman end the scene by having Butch shoot the gun belt off his opponent's hips, sending a gun lying on the floor ricocheting across the room. We're practically told that this is going to be a fun kid's-movie-in-a-grown-up-movie's-body and only light-hearted adults need stick around.

That said, many of the same thematic ideas in Butch were handled similarly by Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch and in the exact same year (1969), no less. But to paraphrase Paul Newman's Sully in Nobody's Fool, "these two movies don't exactly travel in the same circles." I realize that many a cinephile writes George Roy Hill's film off as irrelevant next to The Wild Bunch, but I think it deserves a fair shake on its own terms.

Personally, rewatching Butch reminded me how much I'd love to see Steven Spielberg and William Goldman work together on a project some day. Both men are unique for complicating happiness (rather than misery) in their films, realizing that the things that make many people feel good are taken away from them, which is sad enough. But both Spielberg and Goldman are also fixated on understanding how a child might view the world. In many ways, Butch is The Wild Bunch told from a much less violent, child's perspective.

Even two-hardened outlaws like Butch and Sundance have a child-like wonder to them. They are constantly in awe of everything that's happening around them, no matter how dire or hopeless. Fittingly, the final shot of the film spares us having to see Butch and Sundance perish. We hear it, but don't see it, as if Goldman and Hill are saying, "you aren't ready for this, but it has to happen. Like real parents, we'll cover your eyes for you, but not your ears."

The incredible freeze frame conclusion propels the Butch and Sundance story straight out of Bonnie and Clyde territory and firmly into the realm of E.T. or Yoda. In other words, Goldman and Hill are willing to scare the adults they've managed to turn back into kids, but they aren't masochists (I'm not saying Penn's a masochist either; Bonnie and Clyde is a great film, but it succeeds on its own -- much harsher and more distrubing -- terms). Like a Spielberg or a Lucas, Goldman and Hill realize that Yoda dies, E.T. almost dies and yes, we may hear Butch and Sundance getting blown to pieces, but let's save some of the pleasantness that came before, rather than dwell on their demise. I know it looks like a big time cop-out to some, but I think it's a beautiful, poetic, and entirely appropriate ending to a great movie.

The extras on this re-release are terrific. We've got some issues in the double dipper department, regarding the Hill/Conrad Hall/lyricist Hal David/doc director Robert Crawford Jr. audio commentary from the old disc, but new features include a fresh Goldman audio commentary that he gets all to himself, as well as several new featurettes to complement the carried-over making-of doc from the 2000 disc. Finally, there are new interviews will all the living primaries, including Newman, Redford, Katherine Ross, Goldman, and Burt Bacharach, who I hear still has raindrops falling on his head. Some deleted scenes wrap up the extras on this excellent disc. -- Jason Woloski