Title: Blackthorn

Opens: October 7, 2011, On Demand September 2, 2011

One of the more fascinating guesses that historians are wont to pursue is wondering whether certain famous or notorious people are still alive, though presumed dead. When I started teaching high-school history, the question was: “My grandmother says that Hitler is still alive. Is that true?” Not wanting to cause grandparent-teacher problems, I suggested that since the body had not been necessarily found, anything is possible. Now that Hitler is 112 years old, a bolder answer could be called for. But: Is it true that Osama bin Laden is really dead? We didn’t see pictures of him. And what about Ché? Was he killed by Bolivians, or had he escaped to somewhere else in South America? Or is he hiding inside someone’s T-shirt?

In “Blackthorn,” Mateo Gil looks at the myth that Butch Cassidy survived for decades after the year he was allegedly gunned down in 1908 but may have lived on with a job of security guard for payrolls until his real death in 1936. Just as Robin Hood is lionized by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and Mussolini, a close ally of Hitler, is a fine gent who made the trains run on time, Butch Cassidy is given the hero treatment by Miguel Barros’s script.

A haughty Brit businessman in remote Bolivia to whom Butch—now under the assumed name of James Blackthorn (Sam Shepard)—wants to sell his horses and move back to Utah, makes a pejorative statement about the Indians. Blackthorn puts him down, just verbally as he may be mellowing, particularly since Blackthorn has a native lover, Yana (Magaly Solier). By the time the movie has reached its mid-point, we’re all rooting for the dude, never mind his run of train robberies and bank heists. Blackborn, how aging with a full, gray beard, withdraws all his money, $6000, from the bank, where he quips to the concerned manager that he had never before been given such courtesy by the establishment, he mounts his horse until his trusted animal is spooked by gunshots from a thief from Madrid, Eduardo (Eduardo Noriega). With his life’s savings gone with the wind, Blackthorn contemplates shooting the bandit but is conned into following him into a mine where he cuts a deal to share the hidden $50,000. But Eduardo is no Robin Hood: the money he stole is not from the big bosses but from the Indians themselves, who are now in hot pursuit of the scuzz.

The film is a marvel of Juan Ruiz Anchia’s cinematography, a product placement for Bolivia that should prompt that country’s sleeping tourist board to give rich gringos reenactments of the paths followed by Blackthorn and pursuers. Sam Shepard is the man to watch, but his performance cannot save the Western—or should we say Southern—from advancing so slowly that only a director like Gus Van Sant who in the movie “Gerry” portrays a couple of dudes who go into the desert without water or food, wondering whether they will die of dehydration or of boredom.

Portraying a younger Butch and Sundance does not help the pace ,as director Gil switches back to portray a young Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Padraic Delaney), who will never be Paul Newman and Robert Redford. When a drunken MacKinley (Stephen Rea), who has pursued Butch with the same ferocity that Javert chased after Jean Valgean, shows up, further lionizing Blackthorn and helping him to get away, the film still remains as barren (and lovely) as ever.

Unrated. 98 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – C