George Roy Hill's classic saga of two greatest crooks of all time is an indirect inspiration to Ramesh Sippy for the character development of his two famous characters, Jai and Veeru in the greatest film of Indian Cinema - Sholay. Well to start with the analysis of this film, one gets to observe the technical brilliance of the film in the opening scene when Butch Cassidy played by Paul Newman enters a bank which is about to close and his image appears to be partially in light and partially unexposed due to low light availability in the situation. This shot is considered to be one of the technical masterpiece in world cinema for it brilliant and spectacualr cinematography. Also to appreciate is the editing and the sound design of the film with film never looks out to be gragged and sound seems to perfectly gel in with the treatment of the film.To take you further, one observes that the real character development starts in the first scene only when Sundance Kid denies orders to leave the gambling bar. The characterization in the film is done by serious minds with the reality of Butch Cassidy opens when he kills one of his gang mate who challenges him to be the owner of the gang found by him popularly known as Hole in the Wall gang. The film not only deals with the robbery these two thieves used to do but also the chemistry these too people shared among themselves and with their parter Etta Place played by Katherine Ross. The attitude presented by Robert Redford as Sundance Kid is another attraction to watch out. The film takes you to various level by showing numerous robbery cases in the film. Well talking about, the best part of the film is the climax portion. The climax of the film involves these two characters trapped amongst the army of more than 150 policemen and the twist being the unawareness of these two characters about the trap. These two has an impression to kill just handful of policemen for which they decide to go for the kill. As they come out of the hiding with guns facing the policemen they are shot by the police.The best part is that the frame goes still when these two characters come out and we hear only sound of the shots fired by the policemen. Now this sequence show the moulding of style, substance and film aesthetic. The role sound plays in the last few frames of the film is much more impactful with the visual being paused. So for the one's who have not seen this great motion picture , this celebration of friendship and crime is strogly recommended by me.
