Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

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Average Customer Rating:	4.5
Release Date:	2006-06-06
Publisher:	20th Century Fox
Actors:	Paul Newman; Robert Redford; Katharine Ross; Strother Martin; Henry Jones
Aspect ratio:	2.35:1
Audience rating:	PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Format:	Collector's Edition; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
Language:	Subtitled: English; Subtitled: Spanish; Original Language: English; Original Language: Spanish;
Producer	Paul Newman
Cinematographer	Conrad L. Hall
Editor	John C. Howard; Richard C. Meyer
Producer	John Foreman; Paul Monash
Writer	William Goldman
Weight:	0.36 pounds

Product Categories

Cassidy, Ted; Dierkop, Charles; Elliott, Sam; Jones, Henry; Leachman, Cloris; Martin, Strother; Newman, Paul; Redford, Robert; Ross, Katharine; Rhodes, Donnelly; Hill, George; Hill, George Roy; All Fox Titles; 20th Century Fox Collector's Editions; Westerns; Westerns; ( B ); Movies & TV on DVD and Blu-ray Disc Trade-In; DVD; Widescreen; PG; US & CA DVDs: Region 1; 1960 - 1969; English; DVD

Product description

Paul Newman and Robert Redford set the standard for the "buddy film" with this box office smash set in the Old West. The Sundance Kid (Redford) is the frontier's fastest gun. His sidekick, Butch Cassidy (Newman), is always dreaming up new ways to get rich fast. If only they could blow open a baggage car without also blowing up the money-filled safe inside... Or remember that Sundance can't swim before they escape a posse by leaping off a cliff into rushing rapids... Times are changing in the west and life is getting tougher. So Butch and Sundance pack their guns, don new duds, and, with Sundance's girlfriend (Katharine Ross), head down to Bolivia. Never mind that they don't speak Spanish - they'll manage somehow. A winner of four Academy Awards (including best screenplay and best song), here is a thoroughly enjoyable blend of fact and fancy done with true affection for a bygone era and featuring the two flashiest, friendliest funniest outlaws who ever called out "hands up!"

This 1969 film has never lost its popularity or its unusual appeal as a star-driven Western that tinkers with the genre's conventions and comes up with something both terrifically entertaining and--typical of its period--a tad paranoid. Paul Newman plays the legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy as an eternal optimist and self-styled visionary, conjuring dreams of banks just ripe for the picking all over the world. Robert Redford is his more levelheaded partner, the sharpshooting Sundance Kid. The film, written by William Goldman (The Princess Bride) and directed by George Roy Hill (The Sting), basically begins as a freewheeling story about robbing trains but soon becomes a chase as a relentless posse--always seen at a great distance like some remote authority--forces Butch and Sundance into the hills and, finally, Bolivia. Weakened a little by feel-good inclinations (a scene involving bicycle tricks and the song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" is sort of Hollywood flower power), the movie maintains an interesting tautness, and the chemistry between Redford and Newman is rare. (A factoid: Newman first offered the Sundance part to Jack Lemmon.) --Tom Keogh

Customer reviews

« Home at last in the West »

That's a real American Western. Not spaghetti in the least and not parading à la John Wayne in the even slightest least. Real tough, dirty, hateful. Two lazy and absolutely zilch young men who do not want to do anything, learn anything, even swimming, and yet want the money other people are making so that they both with their common lady love can have high life on the frontier. Just marginal and incompetent young men who do not have any sense of time, of the past and the future, of what was possible before and what is leading to no future, but who cares about the future since we have good money, good food, good wine and good bourbon right now. Tomorrow is another day and we have to spend the night somewhere before we reach that tomorrow. And they don`t learn. First they do not see that trains are finished and that train companies are going to set up the real tracking teams they need to capture them, dead if possible. When they finally realize trains are out just like banks are finished, they go to New York and board a boat to Bolivia. And there they discover banks are not paying, local bandits are both more numerous, better organized and tolerated, but also not quite fast enough for two Yankee outlaws. But they also will find out that no one is going to close their eyes and they will report everything. They won't wait or be afraid. Let's tell the local police that is quite plentiful, and they will in their turn call the cavalry and then dying will no longer be an option. It will be the only bottleneck way out, shot by hundred of bullets and not two or three. Beautiful film that tries to give the real smell and feel of the frontier in those days, dirty, smelly, dusty, potent with filth and total lack of courage, but economically enterprising and trusting the best trackers and the best professional shooters to do the job. Posses and vigilantes were out now in the time of railroads and steam engines, and industry and two digit growth rates. The sentimental and psychological side is maybe not as rich as in the spaghetti westerns, but the film is effective to make you be relieved from any fear that such a past could come back. It is gone and good riddance. And what if we were confronted to that kind of gangsterism again in our suburban sprawl? Then I guess we would have to call the cavalry in again.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2010-08-09

« mostly entertaining despite anachronistic music »

This is a mostly entertaining look at a couple of bank-robbing buddies and the female teacher they both love. The cast members and locations are good and the story is interesting enough.
I just didn't care for the goofy soundtrack which is somewhat anachronistic, and I am not sure what happened to Etta at the end.
Also, the lengthy montage in the middle that is supposed to tell us of the trio's journey across the country and then to Bolivia seems out of place and odd.

Rating: (3 out of 5) @ 2010-07-31

« Disappointing, lazy Blu-Ray transfer »

Such a shame that such a near-perfect movie is given such poor attention in the area of remastering. I blame 20th Century Fox fully (honestly, I should have known better than to trust such money-grubbing weasels as News Corp to do anything more than half-assed). The Blu-Ray version is unbelievably grainy, and even the most SIMPLE touch-ups were left alone. For example, with many old films you'll often see a little thread or fiber on the corner of the camera lens; an antiquated, distracting imperfection, which could be EASILY buffed out with modern editing technology (literally, a 6th grader could remove it in seconds). But, wouldn't you know it, FOX was too lazy to do anything to it. Definitely wait for a "remaster." I bought this film on Blu-Ray when it was at $18, and I wouldn't even say this version was worth that amount. Now that Amazon moved the price up to [...], don't even think about wasting your money on this excuse for a high definition transfer.

Rating: (3 out of 5) @ 2010-07-14

« "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" must have looked like a natural on paper, but, alas, the completed film is slow and »

...disappointing. This despite the fact that it contains several good laughs and three sound performances.

The problems are two. First, the investment in superstar Paul Newman apparently inspired a bloated production that destroys the pacing. Second, William Goldman's script is constantly too cute and never gets up the nerve, by God, to admit it's a Western.

The premise was promising. Butch (Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) were two Western outlaws (unsung until now) who led a gang of cutthroat train robbers. But when Harriman, the railroad tycoon, got up a special posse of experts to hunt them, they lit out for Bolivia and stuck up banks there. You can see, in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," the bones of the good movie that could have been made about them.

But unfortunately, this good movie is buried beneath millions of dollars that were spent on "production values" that wreck the show. This is often the fate of movies with actors in the million-dollar class, like Newman. Having invested all that cash in the superstar, the studio gets nervous and decides to spend lots of money to protect its investment.

That's what happened here. The movie starts promisingly, with an amusing period-piece newsreel about the Cassidy gang. And then there is a scene in a tavern where Sundance faces down a tough gambler, and that's good. And then a scene where Butch puts down a rebellion in his gang, and that's one of the best things in the movie. And then an extended bout of train-robbing, climaxing in a dynamite explosion that'll have you rolling in the aisles. And then we meet Sundance's girlfriend, played by Katharine Ross, and the scenes with the three of them have you thinking you've wandered into a really first-rate film.

But the trouble starts after Harriman hires his posse. It's called the Super-posse because it includes all the best lawmen and trackers in the West. When it approaches, the ground rumbles and we get the feeling it's a supernatural force. Butch and the Kid try to hide in the badlands, but the Super-posse cannot be fooled. It's always on their track. Forever.

Director George Roy Hill apparently spent a lot of money to take his company on location for these scenes, and I guess when he got back to Hollywood he couldn't bear to edit them out of the final version. So the Super-posse chases our heroes unceasingly, until we've long since forgotten how well the movie started and are desperately wondering if they'll ever get finished riding up and down those endless hills. And once bogged down, the movie never recovers.

It does show moments of promise, however, after Butch, the Kid and his girl go to Bolivia. There are some funny difficulties with Spanish, for example. But here the script throws us off. Goldman has his heroes saying such quick, witty and contemporary things that we're distracted: it's as if, in 1910, they were consciously speaking for the benefit of us clever 1969 types.

This dialog is especially inappropriate in the final shoot-out, when it gets so bad we can't believe a word anyone says. And then the violent, bloody ending is also a mistake; apparently it was a misguided attempt to copy "Bonnie and Clyde." But the ending doesn't belong on "Butch Cassidy," and we don't believe it, and we walk out of the theater wondering what happened to that great movie we were seeing until an hour ago.

Rating: (3 out of 5) @ 2010-05-25

« I Don't Know How To Swim! »

This movie looks great in HD. I think westerns were made for blu ray. If you want this classic and you want to see it in its full quality that it was meant to be seen in, check this out now.

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2010-05-09

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