4/10
Butch Cassidy didn’t die!
Both he and the Sundance Kid somehow made it out alive at the end of Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and escaped certain death at the hands of
the Bolivian Army. Flash forward 20
years and Butch, now known as James Blackthorn (Sam Shepard), is still in Bolivia and living a quiet life breeding
horses and enjoying the scenery.
However, James knows it’s time to sell what he has and return home to
the U.S. He is not young anymore, heck;
he is not even middle aged anymore.
There are some people he wants to see back in America but wouldn’t you
just know it, now that James is trying to leave, local events unexpectedly
descend right on his head and he gets mired in a side quest of money and
revenge before he can finally go home.
His sidekick this time is Eduardo Apodaca (Eduardo Noriega), a Spanish engineer
who just stole a huge sum of money from the regional mining magnate and has not
only a large bounty on his head, but a posse of extremely irritated tough guys
on his tail. James and Eduardo get
tangled up together as only two people can in the middle of nowhere Bolivia and
they start working together to get the money and stay alive.
But what happened in the 20 years from when we last left
Butch Cassidy and what happened to the Sundance Kid? These events are slowly uncovered through
flashbacks where young Butch (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)
and Sundance (Padraic Delaney) are
first back in the U.S., make their way to Argentina, and finally Bolivia where
it somewhat tells how they got out of that tricky business. Also in the flashbacks is a Pinkerton agent,
McKinley (Stephen Rea), who chased
the two bandits from the U.S. to South America.
The Blackthorn screenplay was written by Miguel Barros, his first fiction
credit, but could have been written by the Bolivian Tourism Office. Shot in Bolivia, the scenery should garner
its own supporting actor credit. The
camera lingers of high mountains, lush plains and valleys, winding rivers, and
even barren salt flats. Frequently,
James will sit down, stare at his surroundings, and mention to whomever he is
with at the time just how gorgeous Bolivia is.
Directed by Mateo Gil, known
more for his writing (The Sea Inside, Open Your Eyes, Vanilla
Sky), Blackthorn brought Butch Cassidy back to life, but did it
really need to?
According to this script, there was no need for a Butch
Cassidy sequel right after the 1908 events with the Bolivian Army because Butch
didn’t do anything except disappear into the countryside and settle down. Now the camera is back on him because of this
Eduardo business. However, the whole
mess is so blatantly contrived and small minded that the plot is just an excuse
to bring back a very famous character.
Also, it has briefly revived the moribund careers of Sam
Shepard and Stephen Rea, two talented actors who do not receive very many
scripts anymore. Shepard has popped up
in very small roles recently in Fair Game and Brothers while Rea was
more or less last seen in V for Vendetta and a 2009 episode of
Law
and Order: Special Victims Unit.
It is a shame that not only does the Blackthorn script
severely let down its predecessor, but when two aging actors finally get the chance
to show they still have what it takes to carry a film, they are saddled with
this one.
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