Butch and Sundance: The Bad Guys

The film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, directed by George Roy Hill, tells the story of two train robbing bandits in the wild west. The story follows the escapes of these two men as they as they live out their lives as bandits.

This film breaks the traditional ideology that protagonists of film must be good people. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid are two of the biggest thieves in the United States of America and Bolivia. In the United States, this troublesome duo lead their own gang that robbed trains by partially blowing them up, and in Bolivia, they robbed so many banks that they became known as "Los Banditos Yankees". Traditionally in film, the protagonist is a good hearted character who obeys the law and stops the bad guys. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid directly contradicts that ideology by having the main characters be two of the most famous outlaws in the americas.

At one point in the film, Butch and the Sundance Kid attempt to go straight by finding legitimate jobs, but when they are tempted by stealing gold they go back to their old ways of robbing people of their valuable possessions.

The character Butch Cassidy seems like he would not be a criminal by the way he talks his way out of a sticky situation by calming a man who thinks he has been cheated into not fighting his partner, the Sundance Kid, yet he is the leader of a gang. This notion of Butch being a kind hearted fellow is quickly dismissed by when he enters a knife fight to determine the leadership of his gang. Although the mere fact that he got into a knife fight for his gang is bad enough, he wins the knife fight by cheating and taking cheap shots on his opponent.

The Sundance Kid is an enigma of a character because very little is revealed about him, including his name. He is the right hand man of Butch Cassidy and has no moral dilemmas about killing men that get in his way.

Of these two men, it is clear that both of them are hardened criminals and that they break the ideology that protagonists of film must be good guys. Through cheating, killing, and robbing Butch and the Sundanc Kid are two protagonists that are unique for there immoral nature although they are the title characters of this film.