Sam Shepard makes a legal withdrawal in Blackthorn.
* * 1/2 Blackthorn. Written by Miguel Barros. Directed by Mateo Gil.
The only desert in Europe that looks anything like the American Southwest is in Spain, near Almeria in the lee of the Sierra Nevada mountains (the original Sierra Nevadas, that is). Sergio Leone made his spaghetti Westerns there in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and it’s another reason why—in the addition to the obvious historical connections between Spain and the old West—that the Spanish have a bigger stake in this quintessentially American genre than, say, your typical Belgian. Little surprise, then, that a Spanish director and a Spanish screenwriter have taken up a challenge Hollywood probably would never accept today—to make a credible sequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
More properly, Blackthorn is an “alternative history”, the premise being that Butch (real name, Robert LeRoy Parker) survived that 1908 gunfight with the Bolivian army. In the script by Miguel Barros, Butch (Sam Shepard) has lived out the twenty years since his alleged death in quiet semi-retirement under the alias “James Blackthorn”. By 1927 he’s hankering for home, and decides to cash in his Bolivian property for a ticket out. Along the way, however, he runs into a shifty Spanish geologist (Eduardo Noreiga) who costs him his bankroll, but offers in compensation a stash of loot he stole from a crooked mining company. His bridges burned, Blackthorn has no choice but to hope the Spaniard is telling the truth. (Hint—he is, but only in part.)
To get any enjoyment out of Blackthorn you ought not expect anything remotely as fun as George Roy Hill’s original, Paul Newman/Robert Redford Butch Cassidy (1969). Although that film was on equally shaky historical ground, it became a classic for its unique combination of romping fun and piquant wistfulness for the end of the West’s heroic era. Director Matteo Gil (who wrote the scripts for Agora and Vanilla Sky) nails the wistfulness, for sure, but Blackthorn is more a low-key slog than a romp. The gristled, copiously maned Sam Shepard, who perhaps resembles Mr. Mephistopheles from Cats more than either Newman or the historical Butch, has undeniable presence. His performance, however, is no more fun than one of his celebrated post-modernist plays (e.g., Buried Child, True West). The sole exception: a wry scene where Blackthorn, the career bank robber, makes a legal withdrawal from a Bolivian bank.
Even if they preferred to turn the normally talkative Cassidy into a taciturn old goat, Gil and Barros could have made his temporary sidekick, Noreiga, a bit more colorful, a bit more than just a desk jockey who goes stealthily corrupt. They need not have gone for the full, scene-chewing Eli Wallach, but some basis for camaraderie, some reason for the old Butch to ride again with a worthy partner, might have made Blackthorn more engaging. As it is, they don’t, so it isn’t.
There are moments of undeniable visual poetry here. The locations in the Bolivian high country, and in the towns Butch himself might have known, are stunning, evoking the U.S. west but also unique in their way. Gil deploys them beautifully, suggesting by topography alone that Butch’s heyday is not exactly gone, but transformed. He also offers up some flashbacks to the better-known episodes from the boys’ pre-Bolivian days, with Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as the young Butch, and the ravishing Dominique McElligott as an updated, swashbuckling version of Etta, the distaff corner of the amicable love triangle played by Katherine Ross in the ’69 version. These scenes are too brief to amount to much, but they do suggest that, in the right hands, a reboot of the full legend could be non-embarrassing after all.
No question that Gil and Barros have channeled the spirit of the old Butch. His final reckoning with the Spaniard, who stands in for the old aristocratic kleptocracy, is fully in the spirit of the outlaw’s Robin Hood ethic of only stealing from one-percenters like Mr. E.H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad Company. It’s just too bad Blackthorn doesn’t give us the jam with the bread.
© 2011 Nicholas Nicastro
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