Butch Cassidy... isn't the last picture to timestamp itself with a crappy ditty very much of its own period, but today's directors are generally mindful enough that they'll put Celine Dion's latest over the ending credits if they must put it anywhere at all. "Raindrops..." underscores a gauzy montage of Paul Newman and Katharine Ross monkeying around on a bicycle. Peace, man.

I have other bones to pick with this blandly wholesome account of Butch and Sundance's mythical last days. ("Most of what follows is true," a title tells us.) Act one follows the outlaw twosome through their parting from "The Hole in the Wall Gang," a band of growingly reluctant train robbers. Act two sees Butch (Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) on the lam from a merciless Superposse, joined, at some point, by Etta Place, The Kid's schoolteacher girlfriend. By act three, Etta, Butch and Sundance have retreated to Bolivia, where they begin anew their life of crime as bank thieves, and then entertain, briefly, the straight life.

William Goldman's screenplay is tight and literate and witty--I know because I've read it. Yet its slick professionalism apparently discouraged truth and spontaneity; I felt as if I were watching overrehearsed community theatre as director George Roy Hill's cowboy comedy unspooled. Newman and Robert Redford, I'm sad to say, convey this impression best. Butch, a smiley 'good-time Charlie', and Sudance, the 'Quick Draw McGraw'/'Man with no Name' figure, were a complementary and eternal duo in real-life, if we're to believe the parchments: his strengths were the other's weaknesses, and vice versa. In terms of the film, that chemistry shines only on the pages of Goldman's script; one wishes that Newman and Redford had played Cassidy and The Kid with The Sting (in which they starred as total strangers who team up for an elaborate con job) already behind them, for their dynamic here is missing a je ne sais quoi that exists between best friends, a crackling sense of history.

Hill's film does deserve heaps of praise for Conrad Hall's occasionally sepia-toned cinematography, which manages to cast even a devastated Bolivia in a gorgeous and intimate light. And, for better or worse, it begat the "buddy genre" (recent entries include Thelma & Louise), a big reason for why it is often forgiven for not being a very good western in the traditional sense.

Fox has released Butch Cassidy and the Sudance Kid on a Special Edition DVD just a few months past its thirtieth anniversary. Instead of merely recycling the video elements of their letterboxed LaserDisc, the studio has gone back and remastered the film again for anamorphic displays. No one will mistake the THX-approved, 2.35:1 transfer for that of a recent release, but it does boast excellent fleshtones and an absence of nicks and scars. Shadow detail is brilliant. Black level is solid throughout except during Chapter 13, "Chase by night", a too grey scene that is plagued by compression artifacts. The original mono mix has been preserved for this release, a full-sounding but also shrill track.

Supplemental material, accessible via animated menus, is as follows:

• A full-length commentary featuring George Roy Hill, Conrad Hall, associate producer Robert Crawford, and evil "Raindrops..." lyricist Hal David. Hill, who might be reading from a sheet, provides juicy behind-the-scenes anecdotes, while Hall, a recent Oscar winner for American Beauty, is never dry in recounting the logistics of the shoot.
• A years old 45-minute making-of documentary that is entirely comprised of stills and scratchy on-set footage, edited to the recollections of Hill, Goldman, and others. Fun, profane, and revelatory, one nevertheless gets a hankering to see a talking head now and again.
• Candid interviews of five-ten minutes apiece conducted in 1994 with Goldman, Redford, Newman, Ross, and composer Burt Bacharach, three of which I enjoyed more than the film itself. Unfortunately, they are segmented such that we return to the main menu between each subject--an option to play all of them in a row would've been nice. Be sure to click on "Some of what follows is true", a hilarious, Rashomon-style short that intercuts these people's conflicting memories of certain key events in the production.
• Involving (if barely legible) notes, cast and crew bios, and three theatrical trailers
• A collectible booklet

A fine commemorative package for a ho-hum designated classic.-Bill Chambers