Posted on 04/03/2019 2:36:52 PM PDT by Rummyfan
The Highwaymen, Netflixs new manhunt film starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, is a suspenseful and morally fraught take on the story of the exTexas 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. Its a pleasing tale of resourceful, hard-nosed cops thats also something of an essay on cinema and society.
Arthur Penns 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. Penns 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.
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The postman is one of the best movies of all time. It is so rare to see a movie brilliantly executed from the beginning to the very end.
Three Frontiers was ok. Definitely not for 16yr old girls with cramps.
I don't know, if the reviews say it's really good I pretty much know it's full of queers, abortionists, and socialists.
It’s not. It’s worth watching.
It better be accurate. Warren Oates in Dillinger that was a lie. Beattie’s Bonnie and Clyde years ago was a lie. If you read the histories of these two groups you will see that Hollywood just takes all kinds of liberties and presents movies that are action packed falsehoods.
I’d rather watch a documentary.
I’ll give it a watch but from the title I thought this was about Bernie and his fat disgusting pig of a wife that robbed a school.
Not bad, just watch the last 1/2 hr. The BAR’s rip the $hit out of the Ford.
I watched it a couple nights ago and enjoyed it immensely. I wouldn’t rank it as a “mediocre” film.
Really liked watching the two retired Texas Rangers coming out of retirement to find the killers. They must have been in their heyday in the late 1880s and into the 1890s when law enforcement was very different and freewheeling than in the 1930s. Near the end of the film, Hamer tells a young cop what it was like to “apprehend” Mexican lawbreakers in south Texas.
I really enjoyed it
Loved it!!
6.5
I saw it
yep
Watching it right now but on pause while I eat supper........
Do you recommend going to the theater and seeing it or waiting for it to be on HBO/Starz? I can’t remember a Costner movie that I’ve thought was any good, though he has benefited from having a couple of excellent co-stars such as Alan Rickman.
His wife Gladys was pretty hardcore herself.
The producers did a fantastic job of keeping the attention the Texas Rangers pursuing them. You see Bonnie & Clyde’s faces for all of six or seven seconds at the end. So it really isn’t a B&C movie.
It’s a great detective movie set in the era before modern communications and forensics. It’s also a great showdown between the 1,000 man manhunt by the feds and the two old, worn-out Texas Rangers. The Feds, naturally, think the old guys are way outdated, should stay in retirement, and get out of the way.
So it’s a fun view of crusty old highly experienced lawmen using honed deductive reasoning skills against new upstart G-Men armed with the most modern technology but little experience and not much common sense.
We watched it last week I thought it was a better an average movie. 100% from the perspective of the two lawmen hunting them down. From what I recall there wasn’t a single word of dialect from the Bonnie and Clyde characters.
It’s actually good.
I streamed it over the weekend. It’s worth seeing.
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