Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) on Netflix
M19691h 50mBiographyCrimeDrama
Butch Cassidy runs the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang in 1898 Wyoming, robbing banks and trains with the Sundance Kid at his side. After a Union Pacific holdup, a six-man posse trails the pair alone.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb8.0/10239,801 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1898 Wyoming, Butch Cassidy leads the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, a band of outlaws who rob banks and trains. The Sundance Kid is his closest companion, a quiet man and a deadly shot. Irritated by Butch's long absences, the gang picks Harvey Logan to lead instead, and Butch keeps the job by winning a knife fight with him. Butch then takes up Logan's plan to rob one Union Pacific train twice, eastbound and westbound, expecting the second holdup to bring in more money.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Goldman first sent the script out, only one studio wanted to buy it, on the proviso that the two lead characters did not flee to South America. When he protested that that was what had happened, the studio head responded: "All I know is John Wayne don't run away."
- After working on the film, Robert Redford renamed Timp Haven, a ski resort near Provo, Utah that he owned, as the Sundance Resort; a filmmakers' conference he held there in November 1979 laid the foundation for the Sundance Institute, founded in 1981.
- The role of Sundance was offered to Jack Lemmon, who turned it down because he did not like riding horses and felt he had already played too many aspects of the character before; Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty also passed, Beatty claiming the film was too similar to Bonnie and Clyde.
- Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" for the film. Some felt the song had the wrong tone for a Western, but George Roy Hill insisted on its inclusion, and Robert Redford, who disapproved at the time, later acknowledged he was wrong.
- McQueen and Newman both read the script at the same time and agreed to do the film, but McQueen eventually backed out due to disagreements with Newman; the two actors would finally team up in the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno.
- William Goldman first came across the story of Butch Cassidy in the late 1950s and researched it intermittently for eight years before starting to write; he made it an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it as authentic as a novel.
- Gene Siskel admitted in 1989 that publishing his negative review was one of his first challenges as a film critic, recalling that the editorial assistant was shocked he was giving a bad review to a film starring Paul Newman and lectured him on staying honest.
- Roger Ebert never came round to the film: Ebert reaffirmed his review in 1989, stating that he still thought it was a "turkey" and was baffled by its success.
