Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Review


“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is an American classic, and everyone on earth should watch it as long as there is a television in their home.
George Roy Hill does an incredible job retelling the events of the infamous Butch Cassidy and his Hole in the Wall gang. The 1969 movie follows the gang as they rob banks, trains, and really anything they can find a value in, only to be stopped one day in a train robbery when they are halted as a mysterious train car pulls up behind the train they are aboard, then narrowly escaping as a group of rangers emerge from the car, and track the outlaws for near a week flawlessly, two steps behind Butch and the Sundance kid the entire way over earth, water, and even stone using the help of a Native American known for being one of the best trackers in the west, who Sundance had heard tales of in Denver, before finally losing the bandits as they leap off a cliff into a White Water Rapid, barely surviving after being shot at, surviving an impact after jumping down 25 or more feet, and Sundance nearly drowning as he can’t swim. In order to lose their pursuers and bounties, the two alongside Sundance’s girlfriend flee to the country of Bolivia, of which Butch swears is filled with beauty, gold mines, and compares it to being part of the California Gold rush, only to find the county undomesticated, torn apart, and impoverished as soon as they arrive. They find jobs in Bolivia, and recompose their life of crime in the South American Country. Soon after, Butch and Sundance find themselves eating lunch in the foreign country, before they are shot at after the local police discover the horses the two are using belongs to some local bandits, or which the two shot, and they find themselves in a standout with the Bolivian officials, as Butch makes his best attempt to escape by retrieving their horses and trying to pull of a “Jason and the Argonauts” style stunt in which he hides between the horses while trying to find his way to Sundance, but the police discover his stunt and shoot the horses and soon after Butch himself. Not long after, Sundance is covering Butch as he comes back, showing off his impressive gunslinger talent, but is also shot and both men retreat into a restaurant. After a while, the entire Bolivian Army finds their way to the courtyard, and Butch and the Sundance Kid find themselves ironically planning their next trip to Australia, as they inevitably deny their death though they are surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of Bolivian soldiers, and then follows one of the most infamous scenes of all time, parodied by hundreds of shows, in which Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid valiantly run out into the courtyard, guns in hand, shooting at the police before they are inevitably shot down.
One of the most interesting elements of the film is the way the director keeps Butch Cassidy and his gang so comically calm in the face of danger. Such examples are how a town sheriff in what is assumed to be Oklahoma addresses his townsmen about going out in the dead of night and tracking down the bandits, and as the people all disagree, it is soon shown that the hole in the wall gang is sitting not twenty yards away watching the madness of the people wishing for their heads sitting on a balcony and drinking and being merry. Or how Butch Cassidy decides it is important to bath in a spring whilst being tracked by some of the best trackers in the western world. Another example being what I brought up, about how Butch and Sundance are plotting their next trip to Australia, though they find themselves undoubtedly facing death. Another interesting aspect is the way the director uses black and white. In the beginning of the movie, the movie follows Butch Cassidy and Sundance lounging around town, and shows Sundance playing cards with an unsatisfied liquor store owner who wishes to duel him, before he finds out the man he’s playing cards with is one of the fastest guns in the west. This scene is in black and white. However, a few minutes later into the movie, the scene shows Butch and Sundance riding back to the hole in the wall, their gang’s retreat, and this scene shows the mountains and plains behind them, and slowly color is shown coming into view, and the rest of the movie is in color until the very final scene, where the frame freezes as Butch and Sundance are valiantly sprinting into the courtyard to embrace their death, and the scene transitions back into black and white. The director uses this in order to highlight the world that Butch and Sundance ride into in the beginning, fading from black in the beginning in a small, dirty town, to color in an open, beautiful world. In the end, the scene fades back to black in order to give the viewer a clear shot of the faces of the two famous bandits, and give him a sense of reminiscence.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is, without a doubt, one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and I would recommend it to anybody on earth. With the comedy of Butch Cassidy and the talent and hardness of Sundance balancing each other out, the use of black and white, the comedy, the natural beauty of the landscape, and the sense of valiance the director leaves you with in the end secures this movies legacy as one of the most incredible movies America has ever produced.