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 ...
I read a review the other day telling us this is a mediocre film.
Probably is. I’ll probably watch it anyway,
Do we really need another Bonnie and Clyde movie?
yes, of course we do
It's unbelievable (as the author points out) that it took this long to make a movie about the men who ended the nightmare of the thoroughly evil, psychopathic killers Barrow and Parker.
A film with a happy ending.
It is a good movie. I am not going to say that every last detail was accurate. But from what I have read the details are far more accurate than most movies on these kinds of subjects.
Costner seems to have really come back in recent years in the TV/Web based movies. He was really good in the History Channel's Hatfield & McCoys and was very good in this as well.
Not a bad movie. If factual regarding Bonnie and Clyde, they were rock stars back then. Twenty thousand showed up for her funeral. I guess folks back then hated banks more than mass murderers.
Its more about aging tough guys from the vanishing Old West than is is about Bonnie and Clyde. I'm surprised Harrelson was one of the producers. It's definitely not a chick flick or a film about grown men dancing around in their pajamas beating up aliens.
Do we “need” any at all?
BTW I saw this and it wasn’t bad.
The scripted description of Bonny and Clyde as “God damned animals” was appropriate. Excellent film, which we watched just a couple days ago. Dismisses the who “anti-hero” mythos.
Oh, and bythe way...... LIFE on netflix is a great nitty gritty Korean crime series
He's a good actor who got carried away by stardom. But I think in this new phase of his career he's doing some good stuff. I even liked Three Days to Kill.... And Tin Cup is one of the best sports movies ever.
Not really about B&C. More about the lawmen that got them. I enjoyed it.
Hatfields and McCoys was brilliant. Loved every minute of that.
From this perspective.. . well, I want to see it.
The climactic shootout was also dealt with briefly in Stephen Hunter's latest novel G-Men.
Postman was actually pro-American and anti-dictator.
I watched it last night.
Better than most of the testosterone-free fare on Netflix. I swear that channel is programmed for 16 year old girls with cramps.
Actually, it’s pretty damn good. I watched it 4 times....lol
check out LIFE, miseng, Rake
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