THE MAN WHO Loved Cat Dancing is a movie to miss, because it makes promises only to break them. Where it attempts to be modern, it only regresses. Where it tries to be poignant, it becomes parody, evoking only the humor of failure and ineptitude.

Cat Dancing follows the getaway trail of a band of train robbers in the Old West, led by Burt Reynolds, who plays a taciturn and tough ex-Army Captain. In the midst of its carefully planned heist, his gang is forced to include Sarah Miles in the escape. Miles portrays a rich young runaway wife, who improbably decides to board the train at the spot where Reynolds' men dynamite the tracks.

Miles is fleeing from an over-protective, domineering husband; Reynolds from a past which includes the murder of his Indian wife following her rape by another man. (She was named Cat Dancing--hence the title.) The film's spare plot, its classically alienated characters, and its setting in the empty Western desert all fuel the hope that it will reveal something of the inner drives of its characters, and sketch their liberation in the uncivilized freedom of a desert getaway. What can these people learn about civilization by leaving it?

But Cat Dancing is content merely to outline its characters' pasts, vainly attempting to maintain interest by keeping Reynolds' history a secret through much of the film. His gruff caricature of the efficient badman does not reveal a man who has thought out the world and rejected it, but merely a man who has not thought.

Miles is dealt with in the same shallow perspective. We learn little of her past, and never hear her talk of her marriage. Director Richard Sarafian is at a loss as to how to treat this beautiful, cultured and bitchy woman who is thrust into the hands of outlaws. He chooses the easiest way out. Her enticing sexuality is expressed through the constant threats of rape, talk of rape and rape attempts which weigh down the film like a tedious motif each time it turns its attention to Miles.

The mythology of the chaste woman pervades the story. Told of her abduction, Miles' husband, woodenly played by George Hamilton, is concerned only with the possibility of the sexual abuse of his wife. "She would rather die than submit," he says, trying to convince himself. Hamilton is obsessed with possessions. His wife is placed on the level of his mining company, his imported guns, and his elegant book collection.

AS WE expected all along, Miles falls in love with the outlaw leader. She runs to Reynolds as the only man in her world who doesn't try to rape her, and doesn't seem to want to. However, aside from his lack of emotion, Reynolds treats her in much the same way as her husband did. He transforms a rebellious, well-bred lady who doesn't know how to make a cup of coffee into a worshipful companion who scrubs his table and cooks his food. In Cat Dancing's frontier-era West, where women were more scarce than Radcliffe women in Mather House, Reynolds' passionless sexism passes for real humanity.

Miles and Reynolds grope toward each other like clumsy puppets, unable to communicate on the same level. "Why do people fall in love?" Miles asks. "It's like two drops of rain, that fall together," replies Reynolds, who seems understandably bothered as the words leave his mouth. When the two lovers set up house in an abandoned shack, Miles beats a retreat to the suburban TV housewife stereotype. Reynolds only nibbles at dinner, and she runs from the dining room in tears. "I thought I put too much salt in the stew," she explains, the words muffled in the embrace of her man.

The lesson here is treat 'em rough, and they'll come around. Miles leaves civilized territory, but Reynolds makes sure that society catches up with her. Director Sarafian strives for a Peckinpah-like authenticity in Cat Dancing's violent scenes, mixing in plenty of bullet holes and fresh blood. Although most victims die visibly, his effort is a failure. Windows are predictably smashed by fighting bodies, and Reynolds is allowed to wipe out a band of six Indians without suffering a wound. He runs out of bullets after the fifth victim, but manages to do in the last red man with his gun gandle.

The movie abandons all credibility in the final shootout. Reynolds, who has lain seriously wounded on the ground for many minutes, walks away alive from an entire posse.

The movie makes a misguided stab at social consciousness. Reynolds, as a man who has lived with and married Indians, is set against the rampant anti-Indian feeling on the frontier. But Cat Dancing's Indians appear as marauders or fools. "The cigar was one of the white man's good ideas," grins a supposedly sagelike Indian chief. The chief's son, a member of Reynolds' gang, is killed defending Miles from a band of thieving Indians. Reynolds attempts to sum up the problems of the 19th Century American Indian in a one-sentence eulogy: "He wanted to be a leader, like his father, but he only turned out to be an imitation white man."

Cat Dancing has two bright points, which only appear infrequently. One is Lee J. Cobb, who plays the Wells Fargo man in charge of the pursuing posse. Cobb is refreshingly authentic in his role, and his easygoing pragmatism seems to put the film in proper perspective. "A woman once left me," Cobb advises Miles' jealous husband. "I mailed her a suitcase." Cat Dancing's other strong point, its fine theme music, begins and ends the film.

This is an imitation movie. It wraps itself in its ambitions to the point where the basic concerns of character and credibility are ignored. Although its basic idea is promising, Sarafian, Miles and Reynolds grind its potential into the ground.