Old-Fashioned Good-Natured Western Adventure

Rating: 6/10 (2 May 2005)

In the wild west, two renowned outlaws fall foul of a posse hired by a railway payroll company they have robbed once too often, and decide to flee to Bolivia to lie low. It isn't long however before they become equally well known there, as the Banditos Yanquis ...
This is a well-made, entertaining and popular western, featuring a terrific performance by Newman, but is quite unusual in that it is a completely romantic, mythical, playful movie. It portrays its outlaw heroes as all-round good guys; thoughtful, good-natured and considerate, and the frontier as the traditional fun-loving mixture of cathouses, drunks and comedy sheriffs. Could this really have been made in 1969, the same year as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, the ultimate myth-debunking, violent, sleazy, lawless, cruel, unforgiving depiction of the west ? William Goldman's script is witty and full of great characterisation, and reputedly he researched the real Butch and Sundance's histories exhaustively, but can anybody really buy this as a faithful western story after Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy completely redefined the genre ? That said however, this is an extremely enjoyable movie, thanks largely due to Newman's engaging mix of amiability and bad temper, and the fantastic big-wide-world photography by Conrad Hall, who won an Oscar. Redford is well cast as the Sundance Kid, quick with a gun but not so quick with his wits, constantly complaining about the trouble other people are getting him into, but he'll always be one of my least favourite actors. There are several justly very famous moments, such as the escape from the mountain-top, the freeze-frame ending, and best of all the scene where Newman and Ross ride a bicycle to the strains of Burt Bacharach's song Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head, sung by B.J. Thomas. A good movie, and a great western, but also a film out of time. Who are those guys !?