Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a classical movie perhaps best known for its quotability and soundtrack. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is timeless because it follows two real outlaws who continue to rob banks and trains. This movie follows their last days as outlaws.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are two characters shrouded in legend. The movie is based on their lives, but the ending is iffy. We are not sure what happened to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There are several myths about what ended them. Some believe that they escaped with their lives and lived out the rest of their days quietly. Others believe they ended quite bloody. Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t caught this classic.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Introduction
As the movie begins, the camera zooms in on Paul Newman’s face, who plays Butch Cassidy, and for several minutes, there is no dialogue. Only the sounds of a bank shutting down and Newman watching them. The first time he speaks, he asks, “What happened to the old bank?” and is answered, “People kept robbing it.” Newman walks away and mutters, “Small price to pay for beauty.”
Then we are introduced to Sundance, who is playing cards, but we don’t know who he is at first. However, when Cassidy walks up to Sundance, they know each other, but the audience and the card players don’t know who Sundance is until that pivotal moment. Sundance is accused of cheating, and the guy who accuses him doesn’t realize who he is up against. Sundance said that the only way they’ll go is if the card player invites him to stay.
This eases the tension in the room. While he was exiting, the card player asked, “Hey Kid, just how good are you?” and Sundance immediately took out his gun and shot the other guy’s gun off of the holster and into a corner. Cassidy was gathering up money this whole time while they walked out the door. After Sundance’s spectacular show of marksmanship, Cassidy says, “What did I tell you over the hill?” which is sarcasm for how good Sundance was.
The Men’s Job
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid decide to move on from banks to trains. One particular train they keep robbing is owned by a man named E.H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad. Harriman resents the way he is constantly picked on by Cassidy and the Kid. So Harriman puts together a special team of pursuers whose main goal is to hunt down and kill the two.
Cassidy and Sundance outrun their hunters as best they can. They are eventually trapped on a mountaintop, where they can choose to either jump or fight. After some banter, Sundance eventually admits that he can’t swim, which is why he doesn’t want to jump off the cliff. Eventually, they both jump off the cliff and into the falls below. Even though they escaped, they are now floating rapidly down the river. While going down the river, Sundance clings to Cassidy, which causes Cassidy to go under the water a time or two. He threatens Sundance, “If we get out of this alive, I’ll kill you.”
Enter Etta Place. Etta is not a work of fiction, as she was also a real person. Place is a schoolteacher in the movie. She is involved with Sundance, but she houses both outlaws while they are on the run. Cassidy and Sundance figure out that Place’s home is no longer a haven for them to go to. Instead, they decide to go to Bolivia, where the banks are ripe for the picking and where they aren’t going to be followed by their pursuers. Etta decides to go with them to Bolivia, with the caveat that she won’t watch them die.
The Beginning of the End
As Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid scour the valleys and jungles of Bolivia, they rob bank after bank, learning some key Spanish phrases as they go. As Place puts it, “Your line of work requires a specialized vocabulary.” However, as soon as Sundance embarks on Bolivian territory, he is underwhelmed and angry. The train drops them off at a pig farm, and things look rundown and dirty. It doesn’t look at all like home. As Sundance puts it, “What could you possibly buy from here?”
Cassidy settles relatively quickly into the ways of Bolivian life, but it’s Sundance who balks at the idea of settling in. Etta tirelessly quizzes them on how to speak Spanish. One hilarious part of the movie is when Cassidy uses a crib sheet to read off of to rob a bank. When they say, “This is a bank robbery,” the customers line up against the wall and raise their hands automatically without being asked. Bolivians go through robberies all the time. Cassidy keeps reading off his crib sheet and tells them to back against the wall and raise their hands after they already do so. Sundance, annoyed, says, “Skip on down!” and “They’re against the wall already!”
When they have robbed most of the banks in the area, they start having to go undercover again because the law is after them a second time. There comes a point when Cassidy and Sundance decide to go straight and get jobs. That way, they won’t get caught. However, this idea doesn’t last very long. At a restaurant, they are turned into police and shot at. They run for cover and hide until they come out, at long last, with a volley of shots. This is how the story ends. We can hope this is not how they die.
Concluding Thoughts
This was an excellent movie. Made in 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a pure classic. Some scenes did not require much dialogue but got the point across clearly. The soundtrack was also great, and it matched the film perfectly. This movie may just require a rewatch to catch things you might not have noticed before.
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