7/10
One Romantic Burt
14 September 2016
The most romantic Burt Reynolds I've ever seen is the Burt that heads the cast of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. He's also dangerous and deadly when he has to be.

Reynolds like James Garner is usually comic and cynical in his best remembered films. But in this one he becomes quite the romantic hero, almost like out of a romance novel especially to the object of his affection Sarah Miles.

Burt heads an outlaw gang that consists of Bo Hopkins, Jack Warden, and Jay Varela and one fine day while they're robbing a train Sarah Miles crosses their path. She's running away from her husband George Hamilton, her rich husband who's paying a lot of good wages for a personal posse. Caught in the middle of all this is Wells Fargo man Lee J. Cobb.

Reynolds and Miles make such a great romantic couple rarely seen in westerns. Jimmy Stewart and Debra Paget in Broken Arrow come closest to mind, but Stewart was an unabashed hero, not like Reynolds the outlaw.

The title refers to the name of Reynolds's Shoshone wife Cat Dancing who died years earlier. That story is essential to understanding how Reynolds's character developed as it did. Miles is a woman who finds true love, but also gets a lot of romantic notions knocked out of a silly head.

For fans of westerns and romance.
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