"Vietnam" Western without the My Lai massacre

Rating: 8/10 (5 June 2010)

This is a fantastic movie, no doubt a top ten Western of all time. For somebody like me, who watches a lot of Westerns from the '40's and '50's, it is striking how much more sophisticated this film is in terms of realism, wit, story presentation, editing and soundtrack.
Here's what I liked:

Two of the best leading men of their generation in their best roles. Maybe the greatest buddy movie ever made.

Wonderful integration of comedy and drama.

Lots of location shooting in excellent settings.

As mentioned above, a very sophisticated production, especially in terms of soundtrack. Story maintains interest throughout, the characters are all consistent, there are only a couple of plot holes, and most importantly, we really care about these two guys.

Here's where the movie fell short in a few areas:

Even though the supporting cast was good, the movie is so intently Newman/Redford focused, that the other actors don't have much to do. "Lonsome Dove", a similar buddy movie, needed to run six hours to develop its supporting cast.

The failure to develop a traditional heavy hurts the movie the most. The posse leader is faceless and almost one hundred percent off screen (there's no actor even credited for the role). I get the whole philosophy thing that Butch and Sundance aren't really the "bad guys". The "bad guy" is the inhuman corporate industrial complex, represented by the railroad and their faceless posse. In that sense, this is a "Vietnam" Western with no My Lai massacre. Fair enough, but the execution of the concept hurts the movie dramatically. Every great Western needs a vivid bad guy who's a real character with a real part, meaning dialog and stuff like that.

I'm not into the whole anti-hero thing. This movie is a sanitization and glorification of criminality. Notice that they never murder anyone. In fact, you get the impression that no innocent bystander or employee was ever harmed during one of their robberies. Really? (True, the "square" corporate railroad employee is injured by the "cool" counter- culture bank robbers in the dynamite explosion, but he's just a little bruised up and his injuries are treated as a joke).

There are a couple of substantial plot holes during the posse manhunt:

1) They appear to be fleeing off into the wilderness to escape the posse. In fact, even Butch admits they don't even know where they are anymore. Yet suddenly they show up in a small town to visit a former friend who is now the town sheriff (very amusingly played by Jeff Corey). They want to negotiate a surrender with the authorities and want their friend to relay the terms. This is confusing, but by itself isn't that big of a plot problem. The real issue is that they arrive in town riding a single horse. Unbelievably, they leave town not only still riding one horse, but without rifles. Earlier Butch was regretting that they didn't have any rifles with which to ambush the posse. Both a horse and rifles would have been easily obtainable in the town.
2) It's not so clear why jumping off the cliff into the river was such an automatic passport to salvation. After all, they are now on foot with no food or water and ostensibly very far from civilization. I doubt a working pistol would have survived the soaking in the river, so they probably are without weapons. Even if we swallow the idea that that there is no possible way for "super posse" to get down the mountain and catch up to them - even though they are on foot - it's still not clear how they got to the nearest town, or even found it. If it was that easy, wouldn't it have been obvious to the posse where they would go? Wouldn't they be waiting for them there?
That was actually the second time that "super posse" turned into "stupid posse". How did they let Butch and Sundance get away when they were trapped upstairs in the brothel? I mean, they had ten expert killers with guns right outside and these guys were caught by surprise and barely dressed. They went out the back? This is a clever movie. How about a clever plot device to explain their getaway from a hopeless situation?
This may sound like nitpicking, but these are sloppy plot holes that could have been easily fixed.

The movie is very disrespectful to the country of Bolivia. In fact, I read that it was banned there for a long time. In the finale, are we really supposed to be rooting for these two bank robbers as they mow down young Bolivian army recruits like they are at a shooting gallery on Coney Island?