Still Amuses.

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2010)

Everybody know this is a clever, anachronistic piece of commercial of offal, written by a wise guy and directed by a man of no artistic pretensions whatever, but after more than forty years this remains a charming comedy of two roguish and uber-handsome outlaws in the Old West.
Newman is Butch Cassidy as Peck's bad boy, always leading the taciturn gun-slinging Redford, as the Sundance Kid, astray. Together, they have the sensibilities of Harpo Marx. It's "based on a true story," meaning half of it is made up. Katherine Ross as the real-life beauty, Etta Place, is pleasant to look at but seems here chiefly to prove that Butch and Sundance aren't queer, since she has little to do but undress and make predictions of doom.
Some of the gags are clunkers ("Man, I got vision --") while others are pretty good ("This may be the garden spot of Bolivia --"), but that's true of most comedies.
It was filmed all over the place and the location shooting and photography by Conrad Hall are exceptional. I imagine the long-distance shots during the pursuit were filmed in Mexico because it's getting more difficult to find sweeping panoramas of hills and mountains in a country that is now approaching a perfect state of urbanization, or rather suburbanization. One shivers with agoraphobia when he can look for miles in any direction and not see a telephone pole or a pall of smog or a Gold's Gym.
Let's see. This was released in 1969. The year before, "The Wild Bunch" had scored a big hit at the box office, so we have a thoroughly misplaced scene of slow-motion death here. (I blame Akira Kurosawa for starting the whole wretched business in "Seven Samurai.") Of course "The Wild Bunch" led to a host of imitations, but so did "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." How many semi-comic buddy action movies followed? I have counted them. There were four hundred and forty-two imitations, not counting those in Urdu. I mention "Lethal Weapon" only in passing.
Here's another thing, propelled strictly by commercial considerations, that was imitated. Burt Bacharach's original score was contemporary, diverse, and colorful -- waltzes, polkas, rag time, a gallop, a successful pop tune. I always felt that Burt Bacharach's popular music during the late 1960s was inventive and surprising, a nice alternative to The Beatles, whom I enjoyed immensely. Of course Burt Bacharach's songs and movie scores were always middle-class but his talents seem to fit this film because nobody in it -- not Newman, Redford, or Ross -- sounds like anything other than middle class themselves.
Anyway, it's a lot of fun.