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.

This movie came up tonight on the television and though I had not seen it, I had certainly heard of it. The reviews almost scared me off, but happily I read some favourable ones and and took a chance. Bert Reynolds gave a first class performance with subtlety, dignity and a quiet strength. His portrayal of a flawed but somewhat principled man with an unfortunate past was excellent and made me want to know more of the back story which I'm sure was in the book. Maybe it is that the book was written Marilyn Durham, and that the screenplay was by Eleanor Perry that gave the movie it's strength and tenderness ? The treatment of the Shoshone and other First Nation people was very good; they spoke in full sentences with humour intelligence and wit. They came through as the three dimensional people they are instead of the mere shadows that most movies of the time showed them in; something long over due in Hollywood. There were many good performances here, it is a movie worth seeing and deserves a serious place in the genre.

This was a well scripted movie with two leading stars in Burt Reynolds and Sarah Miles who through the movie gradually come to understand one another's predicament and fall in love. Burt plays an ex military man named Jay Grobart who leads a small group of men on a successful train robbery, and while in the midst of their escape in to the wilds, they run across a petite and debonair well dressed Catherine Crocker played by Sarah Miles.We eventually find out why Ms. Crocker is riding alone in the wilderness and also why Jay Grobart robbed the bank. Burt plays a tough gang leader who won't tolerate any insubordination from his crew or from the woman on the run.Through the hills and streams they all run hiding from the posse led by Lee J Cobb and also in hot pursuit is the train company's executive played by Anthony Perkins who just happens to be trailing his wife who has seemed to gone missing whilst out for a casual ride on her $3,000.00 priceless steed.Indians also come in to the picture, and one by one the gang members turn on one another with their expected prize being the warmth of an evening with their travelling companion Ms. Crocker. Bad Burt keeps them all at bay, and slowly falls for Ms. Crocker himself.The climax may be predictable (I am referring to the movie's ending not Burt and Sarah's steamy relationship) but I love a good ending and I put this one in that enviable category. Kudos to the cast of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing for a good performance and to their director Richard C Sarafian, who has given us other classics such as Bugsy, The Crossing Guard and one of my personal favourites, Bound.

The man who loved Cat Dancing is different from most westerns in that it is focused on relationships. This may not be surprising, in the light of the fact that the novel it is based on was written by a woman. In the movie, the woman (Sarah Miles) is really the central character, and the central man (Burt Reynolds) is somewhat secondary.We follow the man from a train robbery to his trying to get his children back, and realizing that he's not going to get them. We also follow the woman's emotional changes. She at first is simply running away from a husband she does not love. She later has sex with a man who has protected her, and is raped by a sociopath. She comes to love, and is loved. And this is a quintessential "chick flick," except that it's a western.Some men will like it, as well as some women.