Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969/Blu-ray/Fox)
Picture:
B Sound: B- Extras: B- Film: B-
George
Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy & The
Sundance Kid (1969) is the kind of hit film that helped 20th
Century Fox rebuild their studio in the 1960s and is the funniest of the last
set of great Westerns before the genre concluded its original cycle. A Professional Western, it is the original
film to poke fun at itself and by the 1980s, commercial action films imitated
that aspect of it to death with little of the charm. We previously looked at the film on DVD,
which you can read about at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4144/Butch+Cassidy+&+The+Sundance+Kid
Essentially,
this is the same exact material as the DVD, from the video master to the sound
master to all the same extras. The
advantage of Blu-ray is that you get it all in a smaller case and on one disc. Too bad this does not playback a bit better.
The 1080p
MPEG 2 @ 18 MBPS 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image is better than the
recent DVD, but the cinematography steals every shot it can from Bonnie & Clyde (reviewed elsewhere
on this site) and the great Director of Photography Conrad L. Hall simply gives
such shots more room, making every situation all the funnier. Composition overall is impressive, but more
work needs to be done on this film, originally issued in DeLuxe color. That means no dye-transfer copies, so the
negative footage and any other prints are going to be needed to fix this
completely. As a back catalog title,
though, it is still very good. It could
just be better.
The DTS
HD Master Audio (MA) lossless 5.1 mix is front heavy and the film was
originally monophonic. However, the
music is by Burt Bacharach and that includes a sudden narrative break, done
irreverently here, for the Bacharach/Hal David hit classic Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head as sung to casual perfection by
the underrated B.J. Thomas. It was a #1
hit worldwide. The mix could show off
the music a bit more, making one wonder where the music masters are, but
purists can hear the original sound in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, which is not
anywhere as good.
The great
cast also includes Katherine Ross, Henry Jones, Strother Martin, Jeff Corey,
Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars, Ted Cassidy, Donnelly Rhodes and Sam Elliot, but
it is the chemistry and remarkable timing of stars Paul Newman and Robert
Redford that keep this popular and it is no surprise Fox has made this one of
its first back catalog releases.
- Nicholas Sheffo
