Could this really have been the beginning of Sundance?

Rating: 9/10 (18 May 2002)

A truly revisionist western in the best sense of the term, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was one of the quintessential American movies of the sixties; a huge commercial success and showered with Oscars. Over the years it has gone somewhat out of fashion but it is still a ground-breaking classic no matter how you look at it. It moves seamlessly between seriousness and a beautifully honed comic sensibility continually buoyed up by one of the greatest of all screenplays by William Goldman, too jokey for some, perhaps, but clever, myth-making and intelligent and while many movies that seemed so much of their period or which wore their influences a little too obviously, (in this case, the French New Wave), "Butch ... and Sundance ..." certainly isn't one of them.
Admittedly Newman and Redford coast their way through the film; they look like they are having too much fun. This is laconic acting at its most laconic, but Conrad Hall's photography is still stunning so the film looks as good as it sounds. I have no doubt that George Roy Hill's subsequent Newman/Redford pairing "The Sting"'s best picture Oscar was one given to make up for "Butch's" failure to take home the big prize.