70
This modest oater should tickle western fans.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey
There is that allure of the Old West that is hard to resist, and there's plenty of grist in the story worth milling and mulling.
60
Gil's alternative history gets one thing bang-on right: If Butch were to live into his senior days, he'd absolutely have to be played by Shepard. Wrinkled, leathery and densely carpeted in a salt-and-pepper beard, the 67-year-old playwright and actor still exudes intellectual mischief and hard-stare sex appeal; his self-styled ruggedness is a perfect match for an infamous gringo living incognito.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
The actor (Shepard) delivers a beautifully understated, world-weary turn that largely makes up for the slow-paced film's longueurs, and which in a better film could be described as iconic.
60
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
Director Mateo Gill's autumnal movie has elements of other late-era Westerns in its blood, but it isn't easily pigeonholed. There are shootouts and standoffs, as well as great scenes like one between the grizzled, perfectly cast Shepard and Rea discussing the cost of criminality and the changing morals of old men.
75
With Paul Newman gone, you couldn't ask for a better senior-citizen representation of Butch Cassidy than Shepard. In his best performance since "The Right Stuff'' turned him into a reluctant movie star, Shepard makes Blackthorn worth seeing.
38
Slant Magazine by Nick Schager
Blackthorn's last-man-standing circumstances, far from a cautionary tale about the cost of the gunslinger life, are glorified as the height of macho nobility.
50
The New York Times by Rachel Saltz
The movie plods along self-consciously, and when the big twist occurs (you'll most likely see it coming), it complicates the plot, but not Butch, who remains a paragon. That's the problem with Blackthorn: it goes all mushy when contemplating its grizzled, out-of-time hero.
70
Shepard delivers in spades, his character weary but just crackpot enough to survive.
75
The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson
Blackthorn could use more depth and less of a sense of weary inevitability, but it never lacks for the arid, vista-prone beauty of a classic Western, or for a sense of lived-in wear and tear that remains convincing even though it's more stylized than realistic.