Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Updated: 21 February 2014

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" is the greatest of cinema fun from the late 1960s, and the best buddy comedy action film ever made. Period. Flat out.

Even if I hate, loathe, despise, and cringe at the hippie-dippy piano crap Burt Bacharach music heard in the title song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." And the dodololedo-shit near the end, you know it sucks.

Commie? Maybe. But I hate the music.

Oh, yes, the film. Worship. In case you're not familiar with this classic tweaking of the western genre, here goes: The Hole in the Wall Gang, led by Butch (Paul Newman) and The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford), robs one too many trains and is pursued by a never-seen gang of lawmen. In their bid to stay alive and re-start their career criminal ways, Butch and Sundance, along with the latter's lover (Katherine Ross of "The Graduate"), head to Bolivia.

Big mistake.

But, watch it and love it.

Mixing standout comedy, solid Western action, and some mild suspense, "Butch" jump-started the Hollywood buddy flick and satirized everything about all of the above before it ever got popular enough to poke fun at.

The film is never better when Newman and Redford not only out fox the law, but also out-smart-ass each other with witty and riotous dialogue. When Butch and Sundance jump off a cliff into a raging river below to escape their captors, it's one of the great stunts of all filmdom, and played off as a quick laugh. Startd by tough-guy Redford's admission that he cannot swim.

The build up to that jump ("What do you mean you can't swim?!?") is comedy/action nirvana, and a send up of tough guy posturing. There's never been a screen duo as cool as these guys. (Ambiguously gay theses abound if the viewer chooses.)

If only for that damn music, this would be classic Top 20 proportions. Top 10. Ugh. "Raindrops." No. Tone deaf bricks. On my head. As is: A-

Road to Perdition (2002)

"Road to Perdition" is as far from a comic book movie as one could get, but it's nonetheless based on a graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner. With a brilliant cast that includes Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Stanley Tucci and a star-making turn by Daniel Craig, it's a great film that could one day gain classic gangster film status.

Hanks plays Mike Sullivan, the enforcer of John Rooney (Newman), a small-city gangster who seems to rule his berg like a wise, old and content Al Capone. But the mad, immoral Connor Rooney (Craig) is grabbing for pop's power, and in the process Sullivan's family, save for his oldest child (Tyler Hoechlin), are murdered. Then the chase is on: Mike and son flee to Chicago for help from Frank Nitti (Tucci). Following is a psychopathic assassin/photographer (Law).

The film just isn't about the mafia, guns and murder, although there's plenty to go around. It's about fathers and sons, and the constant loss communications. The Michaels must bond, and learn to trust one another. And John Rooney, who sees Mike as the son he wished he had, rages and then protects the one he was dealt. This was one of the Newman films I watched after his passing, and it's a great final big screen bow. Newman is brilliant, full of fire and evil as a man who knows he's going to hell for his sins, but must bury himself further in a sulfur pit to keep Connor alive. Newman doesn't have many lines, he lets his body language -- sometimes stiff, sometimes slack, sometimes withered, other times in full violent rage -- do the work. He plays the man as powerful, but broken to the core.

Craig, one of a few actors who can almost match Newman on charisma, is a stunner as the evil adult child. Sam Mendes, coming off "American Beauty," has made a great film. Props to Thomas Newman's top-notch score and the rural, open setting of most of the film. A

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

"Cool Hand Luke" is a perfect film. Just two days before the great, irreplaceable Paul Newman died, I got the itch to watch this 1967 stick-it-to-the-man prison drama from 1967. I just sat in awe of his power.

Newman's Luke is, of course, a regular joe, or Luke, sentenced to a prison chain gang for lobbing off the heads of parking meters while drunk. In prison, the war hero and absolute rebel bucks authority and becomes a quasi-Christ figure to his fellow inmates.

The name Luke is no mistake, even an agnostic, as I am, knows the themes here. But I digress.

Luke escapes again and again from the prison, eats 50 boiled eggs and leads his crew in a race to quickly finish paving a road to let the "road bosses" know who runs the show. And like Christ, Luke suffers for his transgressions.

George Kennedy, who won an Oscar here, plays Dragline, a John the Baptist and unintentional Judas Iscariot. He gives a performance that makes you hate him, them fall deeply, hopelessly, in pity with him. Not love. But pity. And forgiveness.

Such a Christ-like story, film, is it not?

I could go into the mechanics of this being a film about the unbeatable human spirit in the face of oppression, and the religious overtones (which I always found over the top), but that's par for the course for these (those) times. Newman is what I truly love about this film.

The man was a god, and he's never been better than here. God.

One of my all-time favorite movie scenes: Luke learns his mother has died as he sits in the prison camp mess hall, and he quietly picks up a guitar, goes to his bunk and sings a song aloud to himself as he weeps. The scene is perfect. Literally perfect. My heart breaks for my own mother watching that.

The acting is unmatched, as tears stroll down his cheeks. Add in his final scene, where Luke throws back the "What we have here..." line from the wickedly good Strother Martin at his captors, Newman again is perfection. A+

Hud (1963)

"Hud" is a great film, if not a bit odd. I watched this 1963 drama about Texan cattle ranches after Paul Newman passed away in September. Based on a Larry McMurtry novel, it features another of Newman's great performances. But that's almost the catch here.

Newman plays Hud Bannon, a seemingly immoral son of an aging rancher (Melvin Douglas) who has lost his wife, his favorite son, and now stands to lose his home and business after his stock fall ill. Hud is the bane of the old man's existence, but father is reliant on son nonetheless. Hud drinks, swears, fights and sleeps with the wives of other men. He also has red-eyed lust for the family housekeeper (Patricia Neal). Just using his eyes, Newman shows the broken man under Hud's blazing exterior, the man has lost much and suffered greatly, and can only show it through rage. Newman blows every one else off screen, even those who you are supposed to sympathize with. It reaches a point where we almost care for the one person who cares for nothing, and that creates a dramatic fault.

It doesn't help that Hud's nephew, who's to be the hero and true man of the piece, is played blandly by Brandon De Wilde. See it for Newman's performance; the morality of the play is up for grabs. B

Cars (2005)

Re-watching Pixar's "Cars" recently, I had the same reaction upon seeing it in theaters in 2006. I liked it the first time I saw it in 1990, when it was called "Doc Hollywood" and featured a game Michael J. Fox and a nude Julie Warner. The plot also steals from the Tom Cruise drama "Days of Thunder." Here, a self-worshipping race car (Owen Wilson's voice) is lost in rural America, gets arrested and finds his soul among the little small-town people ... err, cars and trucks (including the voice of Paul Newman) through community service. It's a great looking film, for sure; Pixar always is at the top of the computer animation game. And Larry the Cable Guy provides the best laughs as a tow truck. But, man, this story is old and tired. This is the first Pixar film to feel like a retread, and its life lessons are heavy handed and a lie (plenty of big-city folk mange to live happily). Still, those tractor tipping scenes kill every time. C+