Robert Redford had a rare gift for the Western. He made quiet, weathered solitude feel as compelling as a gunfight. In Jeremiah Johnson, he embodied the rugged mountain man with restrained intensity. In The Horse Whisperer, he brought that same frontier calm to a modern story. Redford’s screen presence was understated but magnetic — capable of conveying danger. However, the actor’s definitive Western has to be Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Directed by George Roy Hill, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released on Sept. 24, 1969. It won several major awards the following year, including the Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and for the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” It is now considered one of the greatest Westerns of all time. At the time of this writing, it holds an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s also much better than Tombstone.
‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ is the Ultimate Buddy Western Movie
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid remains one of the most beloved Hollywood movies. It understands that the frontier isn’t really about gunfights; it’s about feuds and friendship.
Paul Newman’s Butch and Robert Redford’s The Sundance Kid are outlaws of the late 1890s. They’re leaders of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang who rob banks and trains with a kind of casual elegance. When a relentless posse closes in, they take Sundance’s lover, Etta Place, and head for Bolivia, where the same cycle of charm, robbery, and narrowing options begins again.
The movie is elevated by William Goldman’s screenplay, which treats the pair less as criminals than as men who have run out of room. Their banter is quick and funny without ever becoming cute; the famous “Who are those guys?” line isn’t a punch line but a dawning realization that the world has changed its rules.
George Roy Hill’s direction keeps the tone buoyant for long stretches. The bicycle ride to “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” is pure sunlight, yet never lets us forget the clock is running. Conrad Hall’s cinematography also finds both the dusty poetry of the open country and the hard geometry of the final courtyard.
Newman and Redford’s chemistry is the real subject of the mostly unpredictable Western. They argue, tease, and cover for each other with the ease of people who have already decided they would rather die together than live apart. That mixture of affection, wit, and clear-eyed doom is why the movie still feels alive more than 50 years later. It’s less a Western than a love story about the end of a way of life.
‘Tombstone’ Comes Close to ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ But Doesn’t Quite Match It
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Tombstone are often put in the same tier, but the former is better. It takes the elements that make the latter shine — the charismatic outlaw pairing, the witty banter, the sense of a dying West, the stylish set pieces — and executes them with greater economy, warmth, and power.
Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday remains one of the great supporting turns, and its O.K. Corral sequence is crisply staged. However, the film spreads its energy across a large ensemble and multiple rivalries, so the central friendship between Wyatt and Doc, while vivid, never fully dominates. Butch and Sundance, by contrast, are the entire movie.
Newman and Redford’s chemistry isn’t a highlight; it’s the engine. Their arguments, jokes, and quiet looks of mutual recognition feel lived-in, giving every exchange more weight than even Tombstone’s sharpest lines. Both films feature memorable dialogue, but William Goldman’s script treats language as character rather than ornament.
“Who are those guys?” and the casual debate about jumping off a cliff land as natural extensions of the duo’s personalities. Tombstone’s best lines, however quotable, often announce themselves as set pieces. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s humor deepens our affection for the pair even as their options shrink, while Tombstone’s humor is usually simply entertaining.
Visually and tonally, Tombstone aims for grandeur and prides itself on being a largely accurate historical Western; Butch aims for myth and mood. Conrad Hall’s photography and the Bacharach score turn scenes into pure cinema, images that feel both playful and doomed.
Tombstone’s gunfight is exciting, yet it remains a set piece. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s violence is rarer, uglier, and always serving the larger idea that the West is closing in.
Where Tombstone celebrates the last stand, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rues the friendship that the last stand can’t save. That tighter focus, deeper affection, and clearer sense of elegy make its shining elements shine brighter.
Decades Later, ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Ending Remains Iconic
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has one of the bleakest movie endings of all time. The final moments are iconic because they refuse to finish the story the way a Western is supposed to end.
After the long flight from the posse and the uneasy new life in Bolivia, Butch and Sundance find themselves trapped in a courtyard by an entire company of soldiers. They argue, reload, and then, still talking, charge out into the open. The image freezes mid-stride, guns blazing, the two men locked forever in motion.
That freeze-frame is more than a stylistic flourish. Throughout the film, George Roy Hill and cinematographer Conrad Hall treat the pair as living photographs — sepia stills that open the movie, the playful bicycle ride, the quiet looks that pass between them.
When the movie stops on their last charge, it simply keeps the same promise: these men will be remembered as they wished to be seen, not as the two corpses that history would have made of them. The audience is spared the bloody result and given, instead, the myth.
The power of choice rests on everything that came before. Newman and Redford spend two hours making us like the outlaws so thoroughly that we don’t want to watch them die. William Goldman’s dialogue keeps them human and funny even as the noose tightens.
When they finally run out of the room, the freeze-frame honors that affection. Their friendship is the last thing we see, unfinished and therefore unbreakable. Most action-packed Western movies insist on showing the cost; this one insists on preserving the partnership. Decades later, the image still feels both inevitable and oddly merciful, which is why it has never been improved upon.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
