Flight

Rating: Null/10 (23 August 2003)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is George Roy Hill's best movie. Here all his little touches work, except for those atrocious songs by Burt Bacharach. That guy is overrated.
By comparison to The Wild Bunch, BC&SK is an artistic flop because--once again--appeasing the audience supersedes storytelling skill. Furthermore, Wild Bunch was a flurry of images (a record in the cutting room) while Butch and Sundance proceed on a straight course the whole time with Conrad Hall's camera zooming the whole time. Sometimes he is more concerned about motion than composition.
With Neuman and Redford in this, you know the quality is going to be on the level of, say, Independence Day. Not once in the story do they get over the fact that all they are doing is cracking one-liners and actually get to acting. Katharine Ross is more of a crutch to the story, I still can't figure if that's a good or bad thing. The problem is the movie tries to make its message too obvious as opposed to not worrying about one and having it come off as subtle. RoboCop had this problem a lot.
Overall, this is good, but not great. For a better Western, see The Wild Bunch. For better music, try The Blues Brothers. 3 out of 5 stars.