Legend of the famous outlaws becomes in-jokey star-vehicle

Rating: 6/10 (12 March 2006)

Director George Roy Hill's film of the famous bank robbers of the Old West treats its subjects like modern pop icons, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford not giving performances so much as cutting up for their own bemusement. The film is commercially shaggy and loose, but utterly shallow and unsubstantial. Even in 1969, nobody could explain the reasoning for Newman's balletic bicycle ride scored with Burt Bacharach (today that sequence could be an outtake), while Katharine Ross (as schoolmarm Etta Place) looks positively stiff standing amongst the red-blooded machismo. Ross also gets the worst lines in the script, about darning socks and lovin' her man until he dies. Hill plays up the buddy-buddy chemistry for all it's worth, and the movie was a huge hit, though it's cartoony in the worst way--like a joy-buzzer--and leaves a bad taste behind. **1/2 from ****