As far as theme is concerned, [Butch and Sundance: The Early Days] might as well be called The Deer Hunter: The Early Days. Once more we plunge into the primal American myth of male friendship: why this friendship and its adventures are the best things in life; how women are meant to watch and wait and understand, with a brave grave sigh, that men must be off on their manly doings. The fact that the doings in the case of B and S are outlawry—theft, violence, and, eventually, murder—matters little under the grand rubric of light-hearted, essentially boyish male palship.

What a bore it is, that idea, that American idea…. But because it is part of our heritage, sometimes it can be exploited affectingly: with limited charm, as in the first B and S (1969) or by direct visceral grapple, as in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. When...