Though it is unquestionably a great film in my mind, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a strange beast of meshing tones, genres, and storytelling techniques. Dynamic as hell, it has the ability to jump at a (strange) moment’s notice from farcical, tongue-in-cheek roguishness more fit for a straight comedy to pensive, anti-western mythmaking more in keeping with late 60s-early 70s westerns. A particularly fitting example is when the protagonists escape to Bolivia: there, we are hit with the wonderful irony of Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and Sundance Kid’s (Robert Redford) professional transmogrification from bank robbers to payroll security; but before this can be relished, both characters are confronted by outlaws not unlike themselves (albeit more lethal), which rapidly culminates in a slow-motion shootout analogous to Peckinpah’s bloody masterpiece The Wild Bunch. The shift is shocking–as one of such a violent nature should be.
