Outlaw Trail: The Treasure of Butch Cassidy (2006)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Load of rubbish!!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

*Spoiler/plot- The Outlaw Trail: Treasure of Butch Cassidy, 2006. A 50's time period film that follows the stories and legends of Buth Cassidy and Sundance Kids as told to their descendants. Their grandson struggles to clear up the outlaws good reputation and name by looking and finding the treasure that was used to do good in the urban community for many needy people.*Special Stars- Ryan Kelley, James D. Hardy, Arielle Kebbel, Brent Weber, Bruce McGill.*Theme- Family is ageless and helps their own.*Trivia/location/goofs- Goofs involve although the story takes place in the early 50's on major character uses a contemporary language colloquialism, "hang with the guy" in dialog. Als o the audience will see the entire film crew in reflection in car's side as it drives away.*Emotion- A beautiful, well paced, well written, well acted 50's film that is really a treasure hunt. The casting and suspense is genuine and plays well. A great overlooked film with all of the same intelligent aspects of Indiana Jones and Last Crusade, the early scenes dealing with the Cross of Cortez.*Based On- Western lore about Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid legends.

It takes forever and a day to get going but once this family-friendly adventure makes it to the adventure part, Outlaw Trail isn't a bad little film. It's got a nice quartet of young actors as kid heroes and some quality veterans like James Gammon and Bruce McGill backing them up. The action scenes here are fairly low adrenaline but there's lots of workable humor and the wholesome bits of the story are about as non-cloying as you get with this sort of thing. It also has far too many characters, the sign of a script that needed another rewrite or two. Arielle Kebbel is cute as the dickens but the middle of the movie hangs on a suspension of disbelief that's bigger than the Grand Canyon. It's really the sort of film that's six of one, half a dozen of the other. It's good enough that adults won't cringe at it while not being good enough to make any adult want to sit through it.In the early 1950s Utah, young Roy Parker (Ryan Kelley) uncovers a plot by the local museum curator (Bruce McGill) to seek out the hidden treasure of Butch Cassidy, who was actually Roy's black sheep of an grand-uncle. The secret is a map engraved on Roy's belt buckle, so joined by his best friend Jess (Dan Byrd), his buffoonish rival Martin (Brent Weber) and the new girl in town Ellie (Arielle Kebbel), Roy races to find his uncle's lost lair and the South American gold it may contain.The biggest problem with Outlaw Trail is that the whole "chase for the gold" thing doesn't get underway until the film is almost halfway over. Before that, the story wallows in the conflict between Roy's admiration for "Uncle Butch" and the disapproval of Roy's grandfather (James Gammon), who never forgave his brother for turning to a life of Wild West crime. It's not claw your eyes out awful. It just goes on and on and on and the presence of Roy's mother (Shauna Thompson) prevents Roy and his grandfather from having enough interaction to make the conflict more than manufactured. Her part and, frankly, the role of Martin should have been excised. They're not terrible but that's screen time that should have gone to other, more essential characters and their relationships.The middle of Outlaw Trail needed some significant reworking as well. Roy and company have to get to the gold before the curator and his thugs. The kids, however, are on foot and the curator has a car. There's a line about how the kids are cutting through a valley that the curator has to drive around, but come on! Unless he drove his car into the Bermuda Triangle, the curator was going to get where he was going hours before Roy.Ryan Kelley is Perfectly Acceptable in a generic hero role. Brent Weber and Dan Byrd are capable comic relief. Kebbel isn't just adorable, she more than adequately fills the teen love interest role. Bruce McGill does a good job walking that like of being a bad guy in a kid-oriented flick where you have to be believable as a child's version of evil. There's really nobody in the cast who doesn't carry their end of the show.Outlaw Trail was an okay time that would have been much better it had been sleeker and got to the good stuff in its script faster. If you're looking for something to watch with your pre-teen kids, you can do much worse than this.

On the Butch Cassidy~Sundance Kid Legend. I saw it on a preview before another DVD movie, (actually I was scene speeding), and it looked so interesting I "rewound" it and it looked very cool, so I hired it on my next trip to the video shop. ("DVD shop" sounds weird, lol).While I expected the movie to be longer and with more twists, more turns and perhaps a few booby traps (I dunno perhaps I've seen too many Indiana Jones movies, lol...) Though it was a very interesting take on the legend and an enjoyable watch, my 2 beefs were the bad guys should have had more oomph (and better lines) and the girl seemed out of character in places. A city girl gone country - although her attire was right for the period, the frump skirt didn't suit her adventurous nature ... And her character - at first she was screeching at being thrown into the back of a van and later, completely comfortable leaping from a height onto a speeding train? And then later on when they were in the mine she asked in a timid voice ... "are you sure is this safe?..." - Probably safer than jumping onto a moving locomotive, Dear....Although I enjoyed the movie, such character flaws (and bad scripting) takes me out of it. That aside, I liked Jess' character best for his enthusiasm and adventurous spirit and faith and of course Butch ... and Sundance was cute! It's definitely worth a look-see for a run romp through history and legend.

I just caught this movie by accident on the Encore/Wam channel, and I was very pleasantly surprised. Take the legend of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the never ending mystery of were they, or were they not gunned down in Bolivia.This movie concerns a young kid, possibly the great-nephew of the infamous outlaw, who believes that Butch Cassidy returned to the United States and buried a treasure somewhere in the Utah wilderness.The action that follows is good old fashioned clean adventure, as 3 boy scouts and their girl friend go hunting for the treasure, pursued by villains, led by Bruce McGill. Lot's of gunfire, jumping trains, escaping down the river in a raft without paddles. All reminiscent of the old Saturday matinée serials. If you like old fashioned fun, and remember the way movies used to be, then young and old can enjoy this one.The only thing I would take from it, is the pacing was a little slow, and the very ending was a bit "sappy" and looked "tacked on". Otherwise get ready for action adventure with lots of old cars, trucks, train and even a bi-plane, and relive the old days of the Saturday serials!