Posted on 04/03/2019 2:36:52 PM PDT by Rummyfan
The Highwaymen, Netflix’s new manhunt film starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, is a suspenseful and morally fraught take on the story of the ex–Texas Rangers who tracked down the most famous bank robbers of 1934. But this movie about chasing Bonnie and Clyde is also a movie about Bonnie and Clyde. It’s a pleasing tale of resourceful, hard-nosed cops that’s also something of an essay on cinema and society.
Arthur Penn’s 1967 cinematic landmark (which is also streaming on Netflix) launched an American New Wave of counterculture films about anti-heroes and misfits contesting a nefarious system. Penn’s successors painted a bleak leftist vision of America as a land of beautiful eccentrics destroyed by materialism, militarism, greed, conformity, and corruption. Exactly two decades after Bonnie and Clyde, though, Costner became a star in The Untouchables, which heralded a Reaganite restoration in which movies celebrated lawmen and the military as the good guys who brought order to chaotic times.
Retelling Bonnie and Clyde from the point of view of the actual heroes of the story is a superb idea that took far too long to come to screen. Hired by the governor of Texas, “Ma” Ferguson (Kathy Bates), aging ex-Rangers Frank Hamer (Costner) and Maney Gault (Harrelson) are given a special mandate to end a reign of terror that left 13 people dead, yet was celebrated as a romantic tale of sexy desperadoes who were folk heroes to the newspapers of the Great Depression and later easily adapted into symbols of Sixties liberation.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
My kid was watching this yesterday so I sat for a bit before work. Not bad, to me the guy from Cheers makes a good character.
I think it depends on the truth about the character he was playing.
No sex, no gratuitous violence until the very end and that wasn't even close to being violent by today's standards.
I don't like Harrelson but I thought he did a good job in this movie as a lazy drunk called back into service by his old partner to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde.
You need to watch True Detective season one
Best work Woody Harrellson ever did
Incredible
An instant classic! Absolutely awesome!
The rangers were disbanded in 1933, and he an Hamer were brought back on in '34, so that would make him 48 at the time of the manhunt.
Frank Hamer was 50 at the time of the manhunt. But I would guess 48 and 50 would FEEL like 68 and 70 after the lives they led !!
Fascinating story indeed.
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