Blackthorn

Blackthorn is Butch Cassidy? Who'd have thunk it

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With a title like Blackthorn, I was willing to give this a chance thanks to good old fashion allure of the western genre.

However with Blackthorn, somewhat of a sequel of sorts to the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, making comparisons was inevitable even just by viewing the trailer.

The 1969 film where Butch Cassidy was portrayed by Paul Newman, proved to likeable, shrewd and ruthless when he needed to be. Sam Shepard's Cassidy, who has assumed the name James Blackthorn is no different. Unfortunately, Sherpard proves to the be film's only highlight other than the beautiful cinematography of Bolivian landscapes.

The film features hallmarks of a western - a stoic lead, no fuss shoot outs and a sidekick to the protagonist (in this case a Spaniard where the partnership between the protagonist and sidekick sadly falls short of a likeable one), yet there is no emotional investment offered, a staple trait of the revisionist western.

The film suffers from its own narrative structure where poor flashbacks of Cassidy's past do not serve any purpose to the story which is stifled by a slow burn pace.

Unlike the revisionist westerns such as Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, there is something amiss with Blackthrorn. As mentioned before, the hallmarks are here but maybe with a more deft directorial touch by Mateo Gil, this movie could have been something.