Kevin Costner is getting old(er), but apparently you can teach an old dog new tricks: He worked with Netflix to bypass movie theaters and provide a feature-length film for viewers at home. I can certainly point to terrible made-for-TV movies through the decades. (Just about anything adapted from a Stephen King book comes to my mind.) But Netflix is proving you don't need a theater premiere to make a solid flick.
Enter: The Highwaymen. This John Lee Hancock-directed movie follows former Texas Rangers Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) who track down and eventually kill famed criminals Bonnie and Clyde. From the moment I saw the trailer, I was hooked and set a reminder in my phone to watch the movie when it came out. I've been doing that more lately as Netflix steps up its content game.
This movie was solid fun from the opening prison break, to an angry Texas Gov. "Ma" Ferguson, to two old guns hunting down these infamous fugitives. The movie is set in 1930s Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Louisiana (heck, even Arkansas got mentioned a couple times). And the camera work is beautiful. The long rolling shots of these two highwaymen driving across open roads in Texas and Oklahoma were beautiful and added to the solitary mood of their task.
Bonnie and Clyde were too slick for the federal government and local authorities. That's why these two old guns had to be dragged out of retirement. The story really feels like a Western, even if it takes place in 1934, and they ride around in a car instead of on horses.
The Highwaymen is also a bit of a period piece, with beautiful old cars, lots of old guns, the frequent name-dropping of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and the introduction of infamous "wiretaps" and very early forensic science.
While Costner's performance as a sometimes quiet, sometimes rageful Texas Ranger who beats Oklahoma gas station attendants to get information is well done, I was more impressed with Harrelson's sorrowful gunman. He's older. His soul is heavier with all the killings they've done.
One of the things I enjoyed most about this movie was the distinct lack of Bonnie and Clyde. They might have gotten a combined total screen time of five minutes. And that's including corpse time. That's what I loved about this movie. It was about the lawmen, not the criminals.
At one point, Harrelson's character remarks, "You used to have to possess some talent to get published. Now all you have to do is rob a bank." And Costner's character lets his frustration fly with the nation's obsession with these criminals. They killed cops, but America and newspapers still ate 'em up! This further added to the urgency of the movie. Bonnie and Clyde had to be stopped before their celebrity status grew any more.
If I had one nitpick with the movie, it's the lack of flashbacks. In storytelling writers are taught to "show, not tell." And for a movie where we're repeatedly told about these two famous gunslingers, we sure don't get to see that. At one point, Harrelson recounts a story where his character and Costner's killed more than 50 criminals holed up one night. The way it's told is 100-percent pure grizzled and worn Harrelson. I loved it.
But it made me wish I could have seen just one flashback of these two as younger gunmen in their heyday. The movie is already about 2 hours and 12 minutes, but adding a four-minute scene of their younger days to show how tough they were wouldn't have hurt the film.
A newsroom colleague told me this movie was much better than the 1967 version of Bonnie and Clyde. I haven't seen that one, but I kept comparing this movie to 2009's Public Enemies, which focused on Johnny Depp (I know, it was weird at first) playing bank robber John Dillinger. Between the two, The Highwaymen is clearly the superior film. If you're in the habit of spending $12 a month on Netflix, load this up. It's fantastic.
MovieStyle on 04/05/2019