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AFI (1998) • AFI-050

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

1969 • George Roy Hill
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid poster
AVAILABLE EDITIONS
Physical
Blu-Ray
ABOUT THIS FILM
RUNTIME
110 min
FAMOUS QUOTE
“Who are those guys?”

This revisionist Western follows legendary outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as mounting pressure from lawmen and hired trackers forces them to flee the American West after a string of train robberies. Paul Newman and Robert Redford bring irresistible charm and easy chemistry to the pair, turning them into both comic partners and doomed fugitives. Director George Roy Hill gives the film a lighter, more modern tone than the traditional Western, blending wit, melancholy, and action with unusual grace. Its playful energy, Burt Bacharach score, and emphasis on friendship over frontier myth helped reshape the genre for a new era. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid remains one of the most beloved Westerns of its generation.

Why it matters

  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid helped redefine the Western at the end of the 1960s, replacing solemn frontier heroism with irony, charisma, and an awareness that the Old West was disappearing.
  • The film’s emphasis on friendship, comic rhythm, and character chemistry gave the genre a fresh emotional center that influenced later buddy films as much as later Westerns.
  • Its blend of classical storytelling and modern style made it a key bridge between old Hollywood genre filmmaking and the more playful, self-aware sensibility of New Hollywood.

Watch for

  • The effortless rapport between Newman and Redford, whose timing and contrasting personalities make the partnership feel funny, lived-in, and unexpectedly tender.
  • How George Roy Hill balances breezy humor with an undercurrent of inevitability, gradually turning a charming outlaw adventure into a story about obsolescence and fate.
  • The use of music and montage, especially the famous bicycle sequence, which gives the film a modern, almost wistful looseness unusual for the Western.
  • The final freeze-frame, where style, myth, and mortality collide in one of the most iconic endings in American cinema.

Vibe

Western AdventureOutlaw Buddy MovieCounterculture WesternWry RomanticismEnd of the FrontierFriendship & EscapePlayful MelancholyAmerican MythCharm & FatalismRevisionist Western
AFI RANK
1998: #50
2007: #73
▼Moved down 23 spots