Butch & Sundance: The Early Days

Day 103 - 4/13/09 - Movie #101

BEFORE: I set up my new computer yesterday, an iMac I bought on closeout (last year's model, I guess) - but it's got Mac's Leopard OS, so things should be much faster for me now that I'm off my old G3 Tower with OS9. Sort of ironic that my home computer is finally 21st-century technology, while I'm watching movies about the 19th century... Maybe I wasn't the only one who found the storyline of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" incomplete, since this prequel was made, but with Newman and Redford replaced with Tom Berenger and William Katt (yes, TV's Greatest American Hero in a Western!)

THE PLOT: A prequel chronicling the two outlaws' lives in the years before the events portrayed in the Newman/Redford movie.

AFTER: I actually think this prequel has more action than the original film, plus it is nice to see the beginning of their story, how Butch + Sundance met, why they started robbing banks, plus their first encounter with the tracker Le Fors (played by Peter Weller, looking a LOT like Keith Carradine...). Some minor continuity issues - Butch mentions the "mint train" in the first scene, then doesn't seem to know what it is later in the film...plus Sundance tells Butch his real name in this movie, but Newman's Butch is surprised when he hears it in the original film.

RATING: 6 out of 10 strongboxes (is it wrong to like the prequel a little better?)