The Highwaymen – a movie review

by The Flamingo

The Highwaymen is one of the recent movies I watched (before this whole madness happened) and it inspired me to write a bit about it. It’s a Netflix film, directed by John Lee Hancock, featuring Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson and the amazing Kathy Bates. I may have a small weakness for Kevin Costner, after all…my mother didn’t sing his praises for 30 years for nothing, some of her crushes rubbed off on me, too. That disclosure being made, I tend to watch all of his movies. 

But this particular movie I did not watch because of him being a part of it. The subject intrigued me so much that I clicked play without even thinking twice (well, it helped being weekend and home alone, with the lunch already made, house cleaned and without any other distractions). The true story of the capture of the famous criminal couple Bonnie and Clyde is the main topic of the film and of course, the Highwaymen played by Costner and Harrelson are the Texas Rangers who get the job done. 

What I liked about this movie:

• it resembles the old fashioned detective action movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s;
• the story of the glorified Bonnie and Clyde told from a fresh new perspective;
• the two main characters and their moral struggle from the beginning till the end. 

So let’s take them in order and dissect them. 

Since I was a child, detective/mystery action movies have been one of my favorite cinema genres. I feel they don’t make them as good as they did in the ‘80s and ‘90s anymore. I definitely feel very old writing that…Nowadays most of this genre is a cliche, the plot overcomplicated, concentrated on special effects and “awesomeness”. The movies lost that feeling of real life in them and the characters are unilateral and boring, most of them feel like “copy-paste” to me. This is my opinion on this matter and that’s why I was amazed how “The Highwaymen” could in 2019 pass on as a movie from 30 years ago. It had some good old fashioned stand downs, some not over the top but yet very tensioned pursuits and a not glorious ending. With this story I got the feeling of that classic American western movie, without any cheesiness or cliches. 

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are really notorious names for all of you readers. Either you saw a couple of movies made in their “honor”, or you heard the songs or simply just know one of their famous sayings…you know their story for sure, so I won’t retell it. The Americans have been obsessed with the criminal duo since the 30’s till this very day, they were thought of the more “modern” Robin Hoods. They told their story from their perspective countless times, each and one of them very empathetic to their cause. “The Highwaymen” tells the story from the perspective of the justice system, from the perspective of the tens of victims they left in their wake. This movie doesn’t glorify them, it presents the two robbers exactly as they are: merciless, cruel, even demonizing them a bit. Clyde is portrayed as a cold monster, untouchable, all cops shaking at the sight of him. His partner in crime and love, Bonnie, although a very beautiful and smart lady, which the cops want to spare (given the times when the women were not treated equally as men), is as unbalanced and cruel as it gets, murdering injured people just for fun and out of boredom.

I liked the fact that the love between this unusual couple and the fact that they were generous to the poor, didn’t excuse all the other heinous crimes they committed. This is a whole new and fresh perspective.

Last, but not least…the characters, the two real life Texas Rangers, made me both laugh and cry. Kevin Costner as Frank Hamer charmed me with his broodiness and his southern drawl. Woody Harrelson as Maney Gault delighted me with his sensitivity and sense of humor. The rangers are old and in retirement, banned from activity through the new laws. They are called upon by the governor, Kathy Bates, to catch the notorious criminal couple after the police failed years on end. The rangers are typical old men, one with a prostate problem, the other with a little bit more fat and back pain. It’s funny at times how they are rising from their boring lives, with their natural resistance to change, to new scientific improvements and they are trying to “get back in the saddle” (the saddle being a very elegant Ford). It’s even funnier and painful at the same time how they are trying to overcome the physical obstacles in their pursuit.

Leaving the physical impairments aside, the real struggle is a moral one, the characters are not black and white, they constantly fight with the grey border of right and wrong, or with the eternal question of who gets to live or who gets to die and who gets to decide. They don’t understand the psychology behind the fact that the murderous couple is idolized by thousands of people in spite of all the horrors they’ve been doing. I felt the characters moral struggle, I empathized with it throughout the story. “There’s always blood at the end of the road”. Nothing joyous in the end, the last scenes are really so sordid that I was left for words. 

A movie with lots of layers, “The Highwaymen” is definitely worth watching for those of you a bit old school. It’s a breath of fresh air in the era of superheroes and “awesomeness”.