Last summer, one of my favorite Web sites, “The Art of
Manliness,” published a best-of list called the “17 Best Western Movies.” On
that list, they ranked 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” at No. 2,
right between “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” It dawned on me at the time that while I’d
seen parts of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” I couldn’t honestly say
that I’d seen the entire movie from start to finish.
For that reason, I put “Watch ‘Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid’” on my bucket list a couple of years ago, and I finally got
around to watching it during the past week. Thanks to NetFlix, I received the
movie in the mail early last week, just in time for the winter storm that hit
Alabama and kept me from getting out of the house for a couple of days. It was
during that time that I scratched this classic Western film off my bucket list.
For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it was directed
by George Roy Hill and debuted in theatres in October 1969. The cast included
Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy, Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid and Katharine
Ross as Etta Place. Sam Elliott also played a bit part in the movie.
The movie is loosely based on the real life exploits of
Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh, two outlaws who went by the nicknames
of “Butch Cassidy” and the “Sundance Kid,” respectively. Etta Place was one of
their sidekicks and was Longabaugh’s girlfriend in the movie. Along with the
Hole in the Wall Gang, they carry out a long string of successful bank and
train robberies.
They’re so successful that a group of bounty hunters are
hired to track them down and kill them to bring an end to their reign of
terror. For this reason, Parker, Longabaugh and Place take off for Bolivia, but
it isn’t long before their tracked down there too. No one knows for sure what
happened to this trio of robbers, but its believed that Parker and Longabaugh
were killed in a shootout in Bolivia in 1908.
As you might have imagined, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid” can be found on a number of best-of lists. In addition to its “17 Best
Western Movies” list, “The Art of Manliness” also listed it on a June 2011 list
called “100 Must See Movies: The Essential Men’s Movie Library.” You’ll also
find “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” ranked No. 15 on “AMC’s Greatest
Westerns” list and No. 8 on “IGN’s Top 25 Westerns of All Time” list. The
Library of Congress has also placed it on the National Film Registry.
In the end, how many of you have seen “Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid”? What did you think about it? Did you like it or not? Let us know
in the comments section below.
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