Who are those guys?

Blackthorn

Crit

The posters tell us that Sam Shepard is Butch Cassidy, and he looks the craggy part, as always. But his acting chops have never been up to carrying a film, and this film needs carrying. For want of a compelling central figure, it leans far too hard on the film we're all familiar with, and that underlies a uniformly unfortunate decision to spend a sizable chunk of the film in the early 1900s of that story rather than the 1927 of Butch's present. Except for introducing Stephen Rea as the Pinkerton agent on their trail, I can't think of one moment in those flashbacks that's worthwhile, and they're all distracting because the chemistry among Butch and Sundance and Etta is so clearly based on the wisecrackers of George Roy Hill's--and the distraction is worse because young Butch (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has a look about him not of the young Newman but of the young Redford.

The 1969 picture looms in much of the imagery and many of the themes here, as well--especially the trope of pursuit by a large, indefatigable band of enforcers. And ultimately that posse brings the payoff to what has seemed a rambling story, but by that point, I didn't really much care.

Here's a question for those who know more about Latin America than I: would there have been any Iváns in Bolivia in 1927? I was under the impression that the Latino origin of that Slavic version of Juan was the Russian  presence in Cuba after the Castro revolution. But I'm happy to be taught otherwise.