Blackthorn

Directed by Mateo Gil

(R)

**

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This revisionist take on the Butch Cassidy legend “should tickle Western fans,” said Mark Holcomb in The Village Voice. The popular version of events is that Cassidy died in a hail of bullets, but an alternate legend has it that the outlaw escaped a 1908 ambush and lived for years in Bolivia under the assumed name James Blackthorn. Yet even though director Mateo Gil “finds a good balance between understated drama and the grandiose Bolivian landscape,” he never taps the story’s potential for elegiac drama. Sam Shepard makes a “magnetic” Butch, said Ian Buckwalter in NPR​.org. The 67-year-old actor and playwright “perfectly blends the mischievousness of the character with the sadness of age and exile,” and his “smoky, reedy voice conveys the dried-out fatigue” of someone long on the run. Unfortunately, nothing around Shepard competes with his presence, said Eric Hynes in Time Out New York. “From the feather-soft storytelling to the dutifully pretty cinematography,” all other aspects of the film “seem designed to recede around its star.” When Shepard isn’t on screen, Blackthorn just “fades away.”