Older but maybe not wiser, Butch Cassidy rides again

Sam Shepard seems to be enjoying himself, writes Colin Covert, of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reprising the iconic role of Butch Cassidy in Blackthorn. Sam Shepard made a big entrance into the world of movie acting as the doomed romantic farmer in Terrence Malick's critically acclaimed Days of Heaven. He has appeared in 40-odd films since that 1978 breakthrough. He has played iconic roles (heroic test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff), walk-ons (Valerie Plame's father in Fair Game) and a whole lot of sheriffs. But rarely has he appeared to enjoy himself so thoroughly as in the new Western Blackthorn. Shepard (67) stars as an ageing Butch Cassidy, who evaded an army ambush to live out his golden years as a solitary rancher. A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor, Shepard chooses his scripts with some care. This one offered him several irresistible lures: the best screenplay he had seen in a decade, a nine-week trip to Bolivia's gorgeous high-desert plateau and the chance to ride lots of horses. "This was a special script, I could recognise that from the get-go," Shepard said. The film is more than a latter-day epilogue to 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Spanish director Mateo Gil, who co-wrote Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) and The Sea Inside, toys with Western lore, imagining the old outlaw returning to his daredevil ways after a long retirement. Cassidy wants to visit America to meet the grown son of Etta Place, who might be his child. A chance encounter with a crooked Spanish mining engineer (Eduardo Noriega) hauls the old fugitive back into trouble with the law...more