The ultimate buddy film

Rating: 10/10 (27 March 2006)

I saw this during it's initial theatrical release and have seen it many times since. It obviously borrowed heavily from the success two years earlier of Bonnie and Clyde where filmmakers took a story about two real life outlaws and fictionally dramatized their story with two good looking actors in the roles of the real bandits. In Bonnie and Clyde they made it a doomed romance and in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid they made it two doomed buddies and a beautiful woman for a love interest. Butch in real life was Robert Parker who rode with the outlaw Mike Cassidy and used Cassidy's name as a last name and was a cattle rustler and then a train and bank robber. The Sundance Kid was Harry Longabaugh also known as Kid Curry and the Sundance Kid who was a part of Butch's Hole in the Wall gang of the 1890's and early 1900's. Etta Place is an historical mystery believed to be Ethel Place but since the Sundance Kid's mother's maiden name was Place it's likely she took that name to conceal her true identity. Belived by some to have been the female Colorado cattle rustler Ann Bassett and believed by some to have been a prostitute from Texas few believe the story that she was a schoolteacher who went west for adventure. Paul Newman and Robert Redford star in their first screen pairing along with Katherine Ross and Strother Martin, Cloris Leachman and Ted Cassidy. George Roy Hill had only directed a handful of films before this movie although all were good and he was most noted for Thoroughly Modern Millie. He would direct only eight more before he retired but had continued success with The Sting, Slapshot and The world According to Garp. Novelist and screenwriter William Goldman wrote the story. This film won three Academy Awards for Goldman's screenplay and for Burt Bacharach's music score and song Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. It was also nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Sound. The only part of this movie I don't like is the video-within-a-movie of the Raindrops song and Butch and Etta's fanciful romantic bicycle ride. I'm most people loved that sequence but it brought the pace of the film to a halt for me. despite that I would still give it a 10.