Blackthorn

Blackthorn requires that the viewer have at last a passing acquaintance with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  In the 1969 film, Robert Redford and Paul Newman play the titular Butch and Sundance, fun-loving outlaws whose adventures seemingly come to an end when they choose to leap into a river chasm rather than face certain capture and probable death at the hands of Bolivian federales. 

Blackthorn supposes they survived the jump, and it catches up with Cassidy much later in life.  He owns a small ranch high in the Andes and he keeps more-or-less to himself.  Change comes in the form of a letter telling him a lost love is dead, and their adult son lives on in San Francisco.  Butch resolves to cash out the ranch, travel to California and meet his son.  He resolves to reenter the world, albeit under his assumed name: James Blackthorn.

And we're off, but we're off on a different kind of adventure.  While Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a young man's adventure of fun and hope, Blackthorn is an old man's journey: one of hard choices, regrets, and character.  Blackthorn is elegaic, very much a western of the Old West, and beautiful.

Sam Shepard plays the title character as a tough and principled survivor, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaimie Lannister in HBO's "Game of Thrones") plays him in flashback.  Combined, the two performances give us a man with one foot in the present and one very firmly in the past, perhaps in a way that only a man who has run from himself can be.  Best of all, they do this in lovely continuity with the story and characters as we know them from the previous film.

The picture itself is beautiful, showcasing Bolivia's varied and rugged scenery and playing to a meditative score by Lucio Godoy, and the effect is mixed, both a classic Western adventure and a contemplation of a life nearing its twilight.  It's an effective combination, and I found myself caught up in the moment and considering the film for hours after I hit the eject button.  Blackthorn is a fine film.