Publication Date: 09-16-2025

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) review

Dir. George Roy Hill

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Remembering Robert Redford

1936 – 2025

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is often cited as one of the finest, most quintessential American westerns ever made, and to its credit, it winds up being a large representation of where American film was at during its time of release. Released in 1969, a pivotal time for the “New Hollywood” era of star-vehicles, an onslaught of young, promising actors, and a wave of grittier, more realistic films from a variety of genres, the film wound up setting trends really without even trying. As a landmark in American cinema, it’s undoubtedly a film worth remembering. As a western, however, it’s worth a second look in terms of formally addressing its quality.

Set in late 1800s Wyoming, the film revolves around its two titular characters, Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman), the wise and nimble leader of the Hole in the Wall Gang, and his sharp-shooting sidekick the “Sundance Kid” (Robert Redford). The two have a talent for pulling off different holdups and robberies, and their first of the film comes when Butch is nearly ousted by his own gang due to his long stints away from his boys. Upon winning a knife-fight, the two conduct a train robbery that goes very well, and in the meantime, wind up meeting Etta Place (Katharine Ross), a local school-teacher who also happens to be Sundance’s long-term lover. Their successful stint of train robberies finally hits an end when a botched job involving excess use of dynamite on Sundance’s part causes certain catastrophe and forces them to try and find work elsewhere, fleeing the law, with plans to embrace a brand new life.

The premise is classic western. The characters are recognizable archetypes despite being based on real-life outlaws. George Roy Hill’s direction gives them a lot of space to work with in terms of allowing them to practically roam free, from location-to-location without extreme interference from the narrative or circumstance. The problem lies within the way screenwriter William Goldman meanders and rifts with his characters, not consistently providing them with very astute or interesting dialog nor evoking the kind of gritty and tough-as-nails sentiment that most westerns did and did so well.

This is very much a “pretty boy western” in that we have both Newman and Redford looking pretty primed and attractive for being outlaws and Goldman’s screenplay never being too violent or bloody, at least until the end, to turn off people. The film achieves success in the way that Butch and his sidekick communicate, with the best exchanges coming when they’re faced with poor circumstance or need to make a big choice in a matter of seconds. Consider the scene where the two are atop a large cliff with the federales hot on their heels, and the only viable option for them is to leap into the river below. Butch recognizes this is their only choice, but Sundance Kid, who cannot swim, is adamantly against it. Nonetheless, the two don’t have much of a choice in the matter and decide to make the giant leap before landing below and struggling to catch the waves below.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid needed more scenes of peril, action, and banter in order to be truly impacting in a narrative sense. Once Ross comes on screen, a great deal of the initial energy and agility of the screenplay, with its ability to cycle between profiling the two outlaws, the Hole in the Wall Gang, and the environment as a whole, becomes decidedly minimized in the wake of the dramatic heft Etta’s character demands. There’s a strong sense of talent on all cylinders here, from the director’s chair to the actors on screen, but not a real strong sense of urgency, and that’s quite a lukewarm way to receive and judge one of the most acclaimed westerns in American cinema.

Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross. Directed by: George Roy Hill.