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No Movies for Old Men
The minute — the very constituent element of the minute, the fleeting second I learned that Netflix made a movie about the lawmen who tracked and killed Bonnie and Clyde, and that Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson would be playing them as — gasp — heroes, I knew there would be a great wailing. Bonnie and Clyde — they’re legendary! They were, like Robin Hoods. And so good looking! Also, they were media stars, which confers a certain moral authority. Why, Bonnie’s photographs were like proto-selfies or something. That movie was important! Why would you make a movie about the icky old men who committed gun violence on a social critic and a poetess?
Eh. I’m fascinated by the gangster era, but I don’t find any of it romantic or tragic. They were all horrible people who got what they deserved, and didn’t get it soon enough. The Netflix movie, The Highwaymen, commits the terrible sin of telling the story of the Texas Rangers who tracked down Bonnie and Clyde without questioning their own archaic modalities of masculinity, and the gnashing from critics is a joy to read.
Pardon the self-promoting link, but the collected snark and snivels can be found here, if you wish.
Published in Entertainment
I like a story with good guys who beat the bad guys.
I enjoyed it. Of course, I’m a grizzled, old white conservative male who believes in law and order. It’s curious that this movie took so long to make. Perhaps many in Hollywood thought that Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde was all that needed to be said.
In an interview about the film with Costner and Harrelson, it was made known that the script was initially floated to Paul Newman and Robert Redford but for whatever reason they may have taken a pass on it and the project languished. One could speculate that Redford may have been reticent to be part of the project that glorified lawmen in light of his later glorification of the Weather Underground and other more preachy Leftist projects. My guess is that it was just too right-leaning for him.
There are some visual similarities to the first season of True Detective, also with Harrelson, especially the long shots of the car traveling along a desolate landscape. Good production values throughout. Definitely worth watching.
This was an excellent, unapologetically right-leaning film that never once sensationalized Bonnie & Clyde as did Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. I just watched the original B & C a couple of months back so The Highwaymen was a welcomed bookend to that psychodrama.
Masculinity is perpetually attacked by our culture as a reviled relic of our past. No matter the genderless pajama boys and girls who write this drivel, which passes as contemporary social commentary, would have likely been adoring sycophants breathlessly clamoring to witness Bonnie and Clyde’s death-car roll.
Changing our culture based on the writings of Teen Vogue and the “create your own diversity studies degree” crowd only weakens humanity. We need women’s nurturing and we need men’s assertiveness. Masculinity is innately hard-wired in most men and the upcoming generation who discard chivalrous strength as sexist or some such nonsense, are heading toward a reckoning. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high
We will always need men like the Texas Rangers who did their jobs and did them well.
Best film of the year thus far.
I don’t remember which podcast I was recently listening to, so maybe the person I’m remembering is you James, but someone talking about The Highwaymen quoted a critic saying it’s like Bonnie and Clyde, but the lawmen are the good guys. The response was, yeah–because they were the good guys. I’ve never seen Bonnie and Clyde, but this one sounds intriguing.
I have it in my queue, just behind what I am currently watching. I am pleased to hear that it is good and am looking forward to watching it. That it eschews political correctness simply adds to the guilty (not really) pleasure.
I saw the Dunnaway/Beatty film many, many years ago when it first came out. I have since read quite a bit about the era and the criminals who populated it. The lawmen were tough. They needed to be. The criminals they were facing were very much in need of being put down like rabid dogs. The Depression was not an excuse for their behavior, but it did give them a certain caché among the masses. One need only remember The Playboy of the Western World to understand how that happens.
I just started watching it last night and can only echo the comments about white guys and masculinity getting a bit of a revival. If only it had a cameo by Michael J. Pollard as an homage, it might have been perfect.
Sing it, brother!
Oh my. Costner and Harrelson are looking at a stint at reeducation.
The Hive will not tolerate this.
Safe space alert, here is an article from the NRA publication “American Rifleman” about Frank Hamer, Texas Ranger. He was slandered in the Warren Beatty film about Bonnie and Clyde.
Woody Harrelson has never struck me as particularly sympathetic towards law enforcement, considering that he’s publicly claimed Howard Zinn as a personal hero. Are the police REALLY portrayed as “heroes” in this movie, or would it be more accurate to say they’re portrayed as anti-heroes to mirror the way Bonnie and Clyde were portrayed as anti-heroes in the 1967 movie (and perhaps as a counterpoint to the way Costner portrayed Elliot Ness as an unvarnished hero in The Untouchables)?
Mrs. O’Shea and I watched it Sunday night without knowing anything about it. This movie surprised me. I kept waiting for the beatification of Bonnie and Clyde, but it never came. Well done from beginning to end.
The police weren’t bad guys in the 1967 movie. They weren’t portrayed as being motivated by greed or malice, for example. They weren’t “dirty cops on the take” with any especial affinity or loyalty towards the banks that were being robbed.
Rather, the banks were the bad guys, with Bonnie and Clyde serving as anti-heroes who were clearly motivated by greed and malevolence but with those malignant impulses directed at the banks rather than being directed at “innocent folk”. However, since their targets were small-town banks rather than giant evil corporations, it’s arguable that the movie actually portrays their crime spree as an inchoate exercise in futility rather than a heroic revolt against “the man”.
As such, re-telling the story from the policemen’s point-of-view doesn’t necessarily require much diversion from the 1967 movie’s story.
The movie is also quite good.
I agree about the banks. And I haven’t seen B&C in a very long time, so take this FWIW, but I seem to recall the Hamer character (Denver Pyle!) being portrayed as unsavory (devious?) leading up to the ambush. I know I came away not liking him.
Woody Harrelson is supposed to be a favorite of old, toxic, white normals? I do not understand this, but then I’ve never understood his post-Cheers appeal.
I don’t know about “favorite,” but he was pretty darn good in the movie that gave this thread the inspiration for a title.
I believe that Frank Hamer was in fact slandered in the Beatty movie.
Until now, Hamer’s pop culture portrayal hasn’t been kind. In the 1967 movie, he comes off as a buffoon — much to the disappointment of his widow, who was allegedly “humiliated” by the portrayal, according to USA Today.
“The portrayal of Frank Hamer in the 1967 film was beyond inaccurate. It was unjust,” Highwaymen screenwriter John Fusco told USA Today. “Frank Hamer was not the mustache-twirling evil buffoon portrayed in Bonnie and Clyde. He was arguably the greatest law officer of the 20th century.” Costner depicts Hamer as he was: a highly skilled ranger back in the field after a hiatus.
As noted a bit above, casting the future Jesse Duke, albeit a dozen years earlier, in the role seems an unkind cut.
You just don’t remember what Penn & Beatty did to the Hamer character, renamed, that led his widow to sue them for defamation-
I think the original Bonnie and Clyde, along with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, got the ball rolling for bad guys as heroes.
Please, please tell me that they’ve cast Warren Beatty as Clyde. They could CG him back to his youth, just like Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson.
I’m gonna listen to Beer For My Horses before watching this one.
I can’t resist a Kipling quote in response to this:
The movie is a slow burn. Reminds me a bit of Public Enemy. Its good, but the trailer makes it look like its going to be a lot more running gun battles.
Of any modern movie it reminds me of Hell or High Water.
Ron Schuler a cabinet minister aquaintance of mine from Manitoba points out the undercurring themes on banking and the politics of the era as well.
I just stumbled upon and watched this movie myself. I thought it was really good and Costner and Harrelson were great.
To me, two places in the movie needed more work. One is the scene in which the little girl tells the detectives she’s seen Bonnie by showing them the doll Bonnie gave her. The other is the seen in which the gas station attendant tells them Bonnie and Clyde were there, after one of the detectives looses it with him over his attitude and his saying, in reference to Bonnie and Clyde, “all the luck to them”. Even these scenes are true on some deeper level, because there are rare cases of kids intuitively knowing which adults to trust (and such kids do come across as a little spooky, and as suddenly much older than they are, the way the girl does) and there are instances of a person suddenly perceiving the evil in some false and dangerous person, or people, he’s been glorifying.
I don’t quite know why this movie is so mesmerizing. I will say the way Bonnie and Clyde are portrayed reminds me, for some reason, of the way the two lions are portrayed in that old movie: The Ghost and the Darkness.
And Clint’s spaghetti westerns!
Hah! I didn’t know movies from 1996 were “old movies” now.
1996 isn’t old to me. I just assumed others would consider that old.
I didn’t either until I saw him in one or two flicks where he was pretty good. The standout being True Detective.
He’s ok there, but he truly shines in White Men Can’t Jump!