May 18th, 2016

Movie Review #9276 BONNIE & CLYDE.

Having today stopped in to Primm, Nevada, to see the actual car in which Clyde Barrow & Bonnie Parker met their end, it was apt that the original 1967 movie was showing on my flight back from LA to Auckland tonight.

Bringing a very young Warren Beattie & Faye Dunaway, the latter looking more like 60s bombshell than 30s moll, to international prominence, this is a masterful piece of movie making that tells the story of Bonnie & Clyde from the time of Clyde's release from prison in 1932 through to their demise on a Louisiana backroad in 1934. In a couple of short years, their ruthless daring captured the hearts & minds of America in the midst of the Depression, perhaps giving those suffering the most some sort of folklore to hang onto. Certainly the movie portrays this way & paints these characters without excuse or misunderstanding, depicting events reasonably close to truth with very little over-dramatisation.

Excellent performances from the aforementioned leads + an equally superb Gene Hackman as Clyde's older brother Buck. Estelle Parsons is Buck's squealing spouse Blanche, Michael J Pollard does the goofball yet sinister sidekick CW Moss (actually a fictional character - an amalgamation of a couple of the gang's sidekicks) with aplomb & Denver Pyle is on Texas Ranger duty as Frank Hamer, the law who finally brings them down. Also spotted was Gene Wilder as a Midwestern twit who manages to get himself & his fiancée kidnapped by the Barrow gang before being dumped in the middle of nowhere, after ticking off Bonnie.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining yarn that manages to decently reflect life in the mid America dustbowl with the bravado of Bonne & Clyde roaring through the middle of it. 8.5/10.