Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 American Western film directed by George Roy Hill** and starring **Paul Newman** as Butch Cassidy and **Robert Redford** as the Sundance Kid. Written by William Goldman, it tells the loosely true story of two outlaw bank and train robbers in the American West who flee to Bolivia when a posse of relentless lawmen makes their usual haunts untenable.
The film is famous for its unconventional tone. It’s funny, self-aware, and elegiac — a Western that knows the Old West is ending. The “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” bicycle sequence, where Katharine Ross’s character rides with Paul Newman to a B.J. Thomas song, is one of cinema’s most delightfully anachronistic moments. The final freeze-frame — the two outlaws charging into a Bolivian army barracks — is iconic.
Why It Matters
The film redefined the Western genre. Before Butch Cassidy, Westerns were largely earnest, heroic, or morally black-and-white. Goldman’s script made the outlaws charming, witty, and ultimately doomed — not villains to be defeated but characters to be mourned. It paved the way for the “revisionist Westerns” of the 1970s, including McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Wild Bunch.
It also made Robert Redford a major star and launched his partnership with Paul Newman that would continue with The Sting (1973). Redford later named his Sundance Institute and Film Festival after his character. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay for Goldman.
Examples
- The freeze-frame ending: Butch and Sundance charge out, guns drawn, and the image freezes before we see them die.
- “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”: The bicycle scene that shouldn’t work but absolutely does.
- “Who are those guys?”: Butch’s repeated question about the pursuing posse that he can’t shake.
Related Terms
- Western, revisionist Western, outlaw
- Paul Newman, Robert Redford, William Goldman
- Sundance Film Festival, 1960s cinema