Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [Blu-ray]

"Not that it matters, but the following story is true," proclaims the opening title of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In this granddaddy of all Revisionist westerns, Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) are freewheeling, wise-cracking western outlaws, who make a point of never killing anybody. The two wiseguy "heroes" share everything, including the favors of schoolteacher Etta Place (Katherine Ross). After a string of Butch and Sundance's train robberies, the government puts a white-hatted detective and a posse on the bandits' trail. With Etta in tow, Butch and Sundance head for Bolivia, where they find that the pickings are much leaner than before. Etta walks out on the two of them, insisting she doesn't want to be around when they are killed by the pursuing posse. Eventually, Butch and Sundance are cornered in an empty building. Assuming that they've only got the posse to deal with, the boys pull out their guns and prepare to do battle -- little knowing that the building has been surrounded by virtually every federale in South America. The film's now-famous final image is a freeze frame of the two outlaws, with guns at the ready and cocky half-grins on their faces, while the soundtrack records the din of the thousands of military bullets which spell "finis" to Butch and Sundance's story. In addition to providing a full evening's entertainment, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also yielded an Oscar-winning song, Burt Bacharach's "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," heard while Butch Cassidy tools around on his new bicycle. In the tradition of "golden age" Hollywood films, the picture is chock-full of familiar character actors in cameo roles, including Strother Martin, Jeff Corey, Henry Jones, Ted Cassidy, Cloris Leachman, Charles Dierkop, and (uncredited) Sam Elliot and Percy Helton. Albert Goldman's marvelous screenplay was adapted by the author into a paperback book, which admirably matches the insouciant spirit of the film. No book, of course, could capture the film's most memorable moment: Butch and Sundance desperately jumping off a towering precipice into a river, as the descending Sundance wails "Oh, sh-------------t!!!"