"You Keep Thinking Butch, That's What Your Good At"

Rating: 10/10 (8 February 2008)

It's interesting that a film Midnight Cowboy about a street hustler managed to beat out a western about a couple of real western characters for Best Picture of 1969. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is simply one of the best westerns ever made, it's got wit, and charm, and will get you positively infectious in your enthusiasm for it.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has the incomparable team of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. George Roy Hill the director had a stroke of inspirational genius teaming the two of them.
They both play a different character. Butch Cassidy is the amiable thinker and planner for the Hole in the Wall gang. Outlaw that he is Paul Newman is so charming in the role you have to root for him. He's a guy who thinks fast on his feet. Note what happens right at the beginning of the film when Ted Cassidy, best known for being Lurch the butler on the Addams Family challenges him for the gang leadership. It's one of my favorite scenes.
But even better is Newman with George Furth as the dedicated employee of the Union Pacific Railroad in two scenes where this stubborn little clerk tries to singlehandedly stop the robbery. Furth in fact is my favorite character part in the film.
Of course Newman is backed up by the laconic fast draw The Sundance Kid as played by Robert Redford. He's got a nice quiet menace about him, but you can tell how much affection he has for Newman. What comes through is these guys genuinely like each other on and off the screen.
Katharine Ross plays Etta Place who was Sundance's mistress. I liked her also, she's a survivor and one grateful for the good and bad times she's had. Ross is a former schoolteacher and she went into the relationship with her eyes open with no regrets. But the most poignant moment in the film is when she tells both of the men that she'll go with them to Bolivia after the USA has gotten too hot for them and do whatever they want, but she won't watch them inevitably die because they can't change with the times.
A lot of the same themes are expressed in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as were done in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The difference is that Butch and Sundance have a ton of redeeming qualities whereas Liberty Valance has none.
B.J. Thomas's rendition of the Academy Award winning song Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head is what people remember most about this film. It's certainly one of the most recognized movie themes ever written. Besides Thomas, good records of the song were done by Andy Williams, Perry Como and Dean Martin.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid won some other technical Oscars including a most deserved one for cinematography. It missed being Best Picture and Best Director for George Roy Hill.
In the only western he ever did in his career George Roy Hill came up with one of the best. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid should be seen back to back with The Sting. Hard to say which one is the better.