the highwaymen 2019 movie review

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Roger Ebert ’s 1967 review of Arthur Penn ’s “ Bonnie and Clyde ” is a landmark in film criticism, a piece of writing that asked readers to engage with a film in terms of what it said about society not in the period in which the film was set but the era in which it was being released. I thought about that film and Roger’s review of it several times during John Lee Hancock’s “The Highwaymen,” which premiered at South by Southwest tonight before a Netflix launch on March 29.

Clearly a counterpoint to some elements of Penn’s film, Hancock’s work seems to be castigating the very concept of even making a movie about monsters like Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He returns multiple times to the idea that these murderers became superstars and introduced the film by telling the story of how Gladys Hamer, the widow of one of the men who shot Bonnie and Clyde, sued Warner Bros. over how her husband was portrayed in the first film. The sense that “The Highwaymen” is meant as a “corrective” to Penn’s film is patently ludicrous and requires one to willfully misread Penn’s intentions with that work. And it’s that sense of self-importance that weighs heavily enough on “The Highwaymen” that it sinks under that pressure to be the “real story” to which we should pay attention. Because taken purely as a character study and a platform for a pair of great actors, “The Highwaymen” works. But you kind of have to forget that it’s about Bonnie and Clyde to get there, which makes it a certain kind of ironic misfire.

In 1934, Frank Hamer ( Kevin Costner ) was 50, which is kind of like being 80 in 2019. He was ready to live out his golden years with his wife Gladys ( Kim Dickens ) and his pet pig when Texas governor Ma Ferguson ( Kathy Bates ) became convinced that the only way to stop the multi-state rampage of Bonnie and Clyde was to reboot the Rangers. They convinced Hamer to come out of retirement, and he went and recruited an old partner named Maney Gault, himself living on the edge of poverty with his daughter and grandson. The old-fashioned buddy dynamic is clear: Hamer is the leader and Gault is the talker. They set off to stop Bonnie and Clyde, tracking them through the Southeast as their crime spree continues.

Ignoring Penn's movie (which is doubly hard as we never really see Bonnie and Clyde for most of this film, allowing us to picture Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in our minds), “The Highwaymen” could have been a solid procedural, a film that offers the factual counterpoint to a myth. There’s value in being reminded that the guys who catch the serial killers never get the same attention as the murderers themselves, but Hancock’s approach is quite simply the wrong one. We get barely any details as to how Hamer and Gault did their jobs. I love a good police procedural, and the details of how we got from a retired Ranger’s doorstep to that ranger being one of the men who pumped dozens of bullets into Bonnie and Clyde could have made for an interesting project, but “The Highwaymen” isn’t that project. Hancock and writer John Fusco are far more interested in long shots of big sky country and alleged commentary on how villains become celebrities than they are with detail. Hamer seems like such a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of guy that it’s doubly depressing that the movie about him can’t mirror that, too obsessed with trying to create its own icons and imagery to feel genuine.

What makes “The Highwaymen” particularly disappointing is that two solid pieces of character work get buried in the filmmaking. I’ve long found Costner to be an underrated actor, and he gets that kind of stolid, unemotional demeanor that impacts a man who has seen more than his fair share of violence. It’s almost too unflashy of a performance but when the film flits off into unearned airs of self-importance, there’s something grounded about it that brings it back to Earth. One could argue that Harrelson could do this kind of Southern charm thing in his sleep, but that doesn’t make it less entertaining. If only both men were challenged by a more complex, layered screenplay because they’re doing enough what they’re given here to prove they would have been up to the challenge.

Ultimately, “The Highwaymen” reminds one that good art can’t be made as a corrective to other art. If “The Highwaymen” had just been old-fashioned entertainment or even a character study, it could have worked, but one feels like they if they looked hard on the miles of road in this film that they would see Hancock holding up signs that say, “This is the true story of Bonnie and Clyde.” Arthur Penn made a movie about ourselves; John Lee Hancock has a movie about itself.

This review was filed from the South by Southwest Film Festival on March 11.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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The Highwaymen (2019)

Woody Harrelson as Manny Gault

Kevin Costner as Frank Hamer

John Carroll Lynch as Lee Simmons

Kim Dickens as Gladys Hamer

Kathy Bates as Governor Ma Ferguson

Thomas Mann as Ted Hinton

John Lee Hancock

Cinematographer

John Schwartzman
Robert Frazen
Thomas Newman

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‘The Highwaymen’ Review: Grumpy Old Men on the Trail of Glamorous Killers

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By A.O. Scott

March 14, 2019

To call “The Highwaymen” revisionist — or even reactionary — would be an understatement. This retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde story is not content to posit that those two Depression-era outlaws got what they deserved when they died in a hail of bullets on a Louisiana back road. It has a sackful of bones to pick with the modern world as a whole. Violent criminals are a problem, yes, but so are movies, airplanes, car radios, women in politics, newspapers — you name it. If Grandpa Simpson could figure out how to get himself a Netflix subscription, this movie would be the whole algorithm. I’m here to say I didn’t entirely hate it.

As Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow rampage across a half-dozen states, the governor of Texas, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (Kathy Bates), is persuaded by her head law enforcement honcho, Lee Simmons (John Carroll Lynch), to bring a couple of old Texas Rangers out of retirement. The governor has disbanded the Rangers and brags about raising taxes to replace them with a more up-to-date police force. J. Edgar Hoover is doing the same thing at the federal level, and while we never see Hoover’s face we do hear him called a “high-flying sissy” by one of our heroes.

Hoover’s men are smug, citified so-and-sos in trim suits who set great store by fancy crime-fighting techniques like fingerprint analysis, wiretaps, two-way radios and aerial surveillance. The ex-Rangers, reclassified as highway patrolmen for their new mission, prefer to rely on horse sense and cowboy folk wisdom. “Outlaws and mustangs always come home,” says Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner), the older, gruffer one. He reckons that Bonnie and Clyde will circle back to the Dallas neighborhood where they grew up. He’s mostly right, but the feds and other busybodies keep getting in the way.

The plan is not to take the fugitives alive. Before he sets out in pursuit — and before he’s joined by his erstwhile partner, Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) — Frank purchases a small arsenal at a Lubbock gun shop. Even though he’s a bit rusty on the draw, Frank is a professional, and he takes the job personally. Barrow and Parker’s slaughter of police officers enrages him, and he’s disgusted by the aura of Robin Hood chic that has gathered around them. Graffiti on a rural water tower reads “Go Bonnie and Clyde!” Young women sport berets in imitation of Bonnie’s signature look. “Coldblooded killers who are more adored than movie stars” is Lee Simmons’s assessment.

Directed by John Lee Hancock ( “The Blind Side” ) from a script by John Fusco, “The Highwaymen” offers itself as a corrective to one of the most famous — and in its day controversial — products of 1960s Hollywood. “Bonnie and Clyde” magnified the mystique of ’30s bank robbers by refracting it through the lens of counterculture revolt. This movie opposes that one with every fiber of its ornery being, including by its insistence on procedural tedium over cinematic excitement. It’s no less violent than “Bonnie and Clyde,” but it’s in a much worse mood.

“They aren’t human anymore,” Frank says, referring to the gun-crazy kids he’s determined to bring down. The filmmakers support this thesis by keeping Bonnie and Clyde’s faces offscreen until the very end. They’re meant to be monsters, but also ciphers and symbols of a world gone wrong.

Frank and Maney carry their own share of metaphorical baggage. American movies vacillate endlessly between the worship of lawmen and the romance of outlaws, but few are as dogmatically one-sided as this one. With all respect to Harrelson and Costner, they aren’t about to compete with 1967-vintage Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in the sex-appeal department. Hancock compensates by eliminating sex appeal altogether, replacing it with stubborn, grouchy belligerence.

This can be kind of touching — the spectacle of old guys muttering and wheezing can have that effect — and kind of fun, too. Frank, superfluously described as a “grump” by one of his wife’s genteel friends, lives in comfortable retirement with said wife (Kim Dickens, too briefly) and his pet javelina. Maney has it rougher, living in a shack on foreclosed land with his daughter and her family, with no job and a taste for liquor.

He’s the drinker. Frank, a crumpled pack of Luckies in his shirt pocket, is the smoker. Frank is the alpha: stern in his morality, steady in his judgment, slow to smile. Maney is the sidekick: jokey, annoying, troubled by his conscience and haunted by the memory of men he has killed. He doesn’t like the idea of shooting a woman, or gunning down a man without warning.

His sensitivity provides a foil for Frank’s unbending righteousness, and also an alibi for bleeding-heart viewers who might find themselves enjoying this tale of rough justice in spite of themselves. Costner and Harrelson generally give pretty good value. This isn’t an especially good movie — it’s too long, too drenched in Thomas Newman’s cloyingly eclectic score, too full of speechifying and self-regard — but it is a coherent one, with the courage of its vengeful, murderous, politically terrifying convictions.

The Highwaymen Rated R. Killing. Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes. The movie arrives on Netflix on March 29.

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Woody Harrelson and Kevin Costner in The Highwaymen

The Highwaymen review – Netflix take on Bonnie and Clyde is criminally bad

Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson star as the cops who took down the infamous duo in an odious and dimwitted thriller

I t was French New Wave great Jean-Luc Godard who memorably mused that in order to criticize a movie, you must make another movie. Now, under this precise principle, Netflix’s new period piece The Highwaymen has arrived to set the record straight about Arthur Penn’s 1967 take on the legend of Bonnie and Clyde. After 50 years vaunted as a masterpiece of New Hollywood film-making and 60s zeitgeist, it’s finally getting taken down a peg, courtesy of some fogeyish cop-aganda furious that the world won’t follow its moral code.

The earlier film, promoted with the flirty tagline “They’re young … they’re in love … and they kill people”, submitted the ravishing Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as icons of countercultural style. They stole from the corrupt Depression-era banks as an act of working-class protest, and because they looked so damn good doing it, they won the public’s perverse adoration. Penn spawned a seductive new breed of antihero, societal rebels that audiences would like both despite and because of their lapses in character.

John Lee Hancock’s newest feature, a Netflix release distinguished from the glut of content by virtue of its hefty and questionably allocated $49m budget, wants you to know that Bonnie and Clyde were not cool. In the first few minutes, a press conference comes to a head when a reporter asks the Texas governor, “Ma” Ferguson, (a briefly glimpsed Kathy Bates) whether the crooks might be seen as Robin Hood figures by the commonfolk. She responds that they killed a civilian in cold blood, and that’s that, blunt law and order worldview established.

Hancock and scriptwriter John Fusco (most recently credited with adapting the utterly baffling Christian parable The Shack in 2017) flip the Bonnie and Clyde narrative’s focus to Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, the faceless feds who pumped the robbers full of lead at the bloody conclusion of Penn’s classic. Their targets only appear in a couple of scenes, seldom with their faces shown, and with only one line to minimize any possible glorification. We instead follow the two ageing Texas Rangers (portrayed respectively by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson , favored actors of your uncle who was in the army) on their dogged pursuit of the celebrity criminals, where they encounter a great many supporters of Bonnie and Clyde.

Every time they cross paths with a sympathizer – which happens a lot, as if the film is helpless to deny the populist appeal of its ostensible villains – loose cannon Hamer gets so very, very mad. An insolent gas station attendant claims not to have any intel on the culprits’ whereabouts, and that he wouldn’t share it even if he did, so Hamer assaults him. He then gives a stirring speech about responsibility and justice to take the edge off of the casual police brutality, and the man nursing a mouthful of broken teeth undergoes a change of heart. He decides to assist them in their mission, just as Clyde Barrow’s father snitches on his own son in the wake of a similarly convincing monologue from Hamer a few scenes later.

Papa Barrow even gives Hamer permission to kill his son on sight, explaining that Clyde won’t allow himself to be taken alive. It’s an easy out for the ethical tarnish of shooting first and asking questions never during the final onslaught of bullets. Hancock and Fusco want their protagonists to be the good guys so badly that they have rigged the game, creating a world were everything they do becomes right by virtue of having been done by them. This is, not quite incidentally, the exact philosophy of law enforcement that’s created a culture of fear and contempt for the frequently violent, unaccountable policing in America.

Woody Harrleson and Kevin Costner in The Highwaymen

The film retrofits the Dirty Harry-style “cop on the edge who doesn’t play by the rules” archetype for the 1930s, with its reactionary politics even more pronounced when literally reacting to the 60s film’s liberal attitudes. As Hamer goes to the town gun store to pick up an armory’s worth of firepower, the camera pornographically pans over the weaponry. The final scene squeezes in a gesture of mild disdain for the press, in case the whiff of Maga in the air wasn’t yet detectable. Though Hamer loathes Bonnie and Clyde from the bottom of his cholesterol-hardened heart, Costner emotes the obligatory hesitance when mentioning that he “never shot a girl before”.

That comment feels like it’s of a piece with Hamer’s impeccably coiffed and largely silent wife, or the sleek Jaguar that he drives, or his perfectly pressed suit and fedora combo. At the heart of all the bluster, all the impotent rage over the cop killers the public won’t stop idolizing, lies an old-fashioned notion of masculinity rooted in insecurity and smallness. The long since retired Hamer and Gault have aged into geezerhood and the film has a slight sense of humor about it, dealing the latter an enflamed prostate necessitating numerous pee breaks. Mostly, however, it exists to affirm that these men and the men like them are still empowered and relevant. The raison d’être of the microgenre I have previously termed “geriaction” is propping up its chosen heroes’ crumbling male egos; to prove he’s still got it, Gault beats up a couple of muggers who attempt to jump him mid-urination with his offscreen penis hanging out, and then gives one a swirly.

The cruel irony of this film and its ideological brethren is that they cannot help but lay bare their anxieties while sweatily laboring to assuage them. The harder that Hancock and Fusco shake their fists and stamp their feet and insist that Bonnie and Clyde were just your average dime store sociopaths, the less convincing their counterargument. Watching Costner try in vain to scale a wooden fence, a viewer may see outmoded mores of manhood fading before their very eyes. Hamer and Gault won the day in a hail of submachine fire, but even their hagiography can’t hide that they’re history’s losers.

The Highwaymen is screening at SXSW and will receive a US theatrical release on 15 March before launching on Netflix on 29 March

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Netflix’s The Highwaymen : Just an Excuse to Spend Time With Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson

What if Bonnie and Clyde were just a couple of murderous psychos, and the lawmen who emptied 130 rounds into them were the real heroes? Broadly speaking, that’s the thesis presented by John Lee Hancock’s new Netflix film The Highwaymen , which follows two aging Texas Rangers who are dragged out of retirement to pursue the elusive, deadly lovers across the Central United States during the Great Depression. But the picture works best, perhaps, as an opportunity to spend some time with the grizzled duo of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, who step into their roles as these “has-been vaqueros” with comfort and familiarity.

Like all elegiac pseudo-Western characters, these two have found themselves in quite different circumstances in their twilight years. When he’s first approached about going after the killers, the stoic, precise Frank Hamer (Costner) is living a seemingly comfortable retirement thanks to a stint working security for oil companies; by contrast, his former compadre Maney Gault (Harrelson) is jobless and humiliated by the burden he’s causing for his struggling daughter’s family. Gault needs the work, but Hamer takes him on because the rest of their old crew is dead.

Their quarries are the infamous deputy-killing, bank- and gas-station-robbing duo of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, two star-crossed 20-somethings who fused Depression era picture-show glamour with the class resentment borne of economic collapse. They became folk heroes at the time, and have remained so over the years, thanks in part to Arthur Penn’s brilliantly violent 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde , a studio movie that was adopted by the era’s youth culture. Hancock doesn’t really try to convince us that Bonnie and Clyde were villains; he treats it as a given, barely ever showing them and allowing their absence to enhance their menace. When we do catch a glimpse of the doomed, gun-crazy lovers, we almost never see their faces; they’re shot from a distance, elusive and ghostly. Even Bonnie’s limp feels less like a sign of vulnerability and more like a serial killer’s trademark strut.

Despite such elements, this isn’t exactly a thriller. It’s more a laconic road movie, with Hamer and Gault making for intriguingly terse companions. We like watching them, which is good, because neither is particularly chatty; Hamer is stoic and focused, while Gault is a mess, a broken alcoholic desperate not to screw up his newfound gig. On the rare occasion when they do open up, it’s to others: Hamer has a brief, unsettling confrontation with Clyde’s father (played by the great William Sadler), in which he recalls how he got started early on being a lawman, and Gault has a gripping late monologue about a ghastly incident from his years as a Ranger that haunts him to this day.

Well-acted and somber, The Highwaymen feels at times like a movie designed to embody the restrained, unforthcoming nature of its heroes. And if it seems a little old fashioned and out of step, that’s at least partly intentional: Gault and Hamer’s outdated and questionable methods of law enforcement are on the way out, thanks to the rapid centralization and technological development of the modern surveillance state. But these men can be effective, too, even as they’re befuddled by new procedures. Hamer is able to accomplish forensic wonders with just a couple of glances, while Gault expresses bewilderment at the new fingerprinting and analysis techniques being used by the cops.

There is an idea here, but I wish Hancock had done more with it. It was hard at times not to be reminded of Michael Mann’s significantly more detailed and dense (and, in my mind, superior) John Dillinger drama Public Enemies , which showed a charismatic, old-school outlaw being slowly cornered by a growing law-enforcement apparatus on one hand, and an increasingly connected mob network on the other. The film also occasionally recalls another superior work, Clint Eastwood’s A Perfect World , which John Lee Hancock actually wrote (and which also starred Costner, this time as the outlaw on the run). The Highwaymen never quite manages to conjure a changing world, and as a result its more interesting ideas are left blowing in the wind. But as an excuse to spend some time with Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson doing what Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson do, it’ll do just fine.

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SXSW Film Review: ‘The Highwaymen’

Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson are well-matched as the men who caught Bonnie and Clyde in this revisionist version of the gangster couple’s mythos.

By Joe Leydon

Film Critic

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Arriving more than a half-century after Arthur Penn’s violent folk-ballad “Bonnie and Clyde” tapped into the zeitgeist and caught lightning in a bottle by portraying the Depression-era gangster couple in a manner that recast them as anti-establishment rebels, “The Highwaymen” aims to set the record straight with a respectfully celebratory depiction of the two lawmen most responsible for ending their bloody crime wave. Bosley Crowther, among others, likely would have approved of such revisionism. Still, this workman-like Netflix production — set to kick off a limited theatrical run March 15 before streaming March 29 — commands attention less as historical counterpoint than as a sturdy showcase for the neatly balanced lead performances of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson .

While Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are represented here more or less as fleetingly glimpsed abstractions, embodied by Emily Brobst and Edward Bossert in the manner of anonymous re-enactors in a cable-TV historical documentary, legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and his redoubtable sidekick Maney Gault are vividly and approvingly depicted as aged but not obsolete old-school heroes who manfully rise to the occasion when younger, cockier, and better-equipped federal agents and state police officers prove unable to track down the trigger-happy criminals after Bonnie helps Clyde and an accomplice escape a Texas prison farm in 1934.

Working from an efficiently straightforward screenplay by John Fusco (“Hildalgo”), “The Alamo” director John Lee Hancock uses brisk, broad brushstrokes during early scenes of exposition: Years after disbanding the Texas Rangers to make way for a new generation of law-enforcement personnel, Lone Star state governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (Kathy Bates), stung by bad publicity and angered by public adulation afforded Bonnie and Clyde, accepts advice from Texas Prison System chief Lee Simmons (John Carroll Lynch) to call Hamer out of retirement and give him “highwayman” status to ramrod his own manhunt. Hamer — who, truth to tell, doesn’t need much convincing to figuratively get back in the saddle, despite the concern of his supportive wife (Kim Dickens) — in turn enlists his old and fellow ex-Ranger Gault to join him on the hunt.

For long stretches thereafter, “The Highwaymen” relies almost entirely on the chemistry generated by Costner and Harrelson to sustain interest, as Hamer (memorably played as a far less complex character by Denver Pyle in Penn’s version) and Gault follow their guts and trust their instincts while methodically follow clues and connect dots overlooked by other lawmen using new-fangled crime-solving aids like wiretapping and aerial reconnaissance. Their approach is dogged, even plodding, but it’s obvious that they couldn’t work much faster if they tried: Each man is thick around the waist and easily winded during foot chases. (Gault needs to take frequent bathroom breaks, a running gag that somehow never gets tiresome.) And yet, not unlike John Wayne during his late-period films, both men can manhandle younger guys who need manhandling when the need arises. It’s just that, in their case, they have more frequent need to back up their fists with brandished weapons.

It’s not difficult to imagine an alternative version of “The Highwaymen” in which the concept of old-timers hunting bad guys is played for laughs (think “The Sunshine Boys” armed with tommy guns) and these same two lead players coasting through with easygoing aplomb. But Hancock takes his cue from the somber, almost elegiac tone of Fusco’s script — which reportedly was considered years ago as a vehicle for Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

As a result, Costner and Harrelson spend a good deal of time discussing the responsibilities that weigh heavily upon them as they continue their manhunt, and their differing yet ultimately complementary philosophies regarding violent responses to violent criminals. Costner is the more dour of the pair, though he is allowed more than his fair share of dryly humorous remarks, while Harrelson is freer to fling frequent wisecracks, and the mix is most entertaining. But each actor gets to deliver what are essentially dramatic soliloquies while describing mayhem that immutably shaped their characters. That might sound too corny by half, but Costner and Harrelson effectively infuse their words with world-weary conviction.

“The Highwaymen” boasts persuasive period detail across the board, yet features only a few scenes that can be described as conventionally exciting — and, of course, the climactic ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, almost as bloody as the one in Penn’s 1967 movie, is one of them. Arguably more impressive, however, is a high-speed car chase across dusty flatlands that ends with Hamer and Gault being outmaneuvered by their quarries. Gault is so embarrassed, he’s moved to question his and Hamer’s abilities. (“Maybe it ain’t in us no more.”) But Hamer remains resolved. He knows what they must do, even though neither he nor Gault take any apparent delight when the deed is done.

It should be noted, by the way, that “The Highwaymen” indicates the celebrity Bonnie and Clyde enjoyed during their brief lifetimes even more explicitly than Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” ever did. This is especially true during the film’s final moments, ending on exactly the right note for Hancock and Fusco’s take on the tale.

Reviewed at SXSW Film Festival (Headliners), March 10, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 132 MIN.

Production: A Netflix release and production. Producer: Casey Silver. Executive producers: Michael J. Malone, John Lee Hancock, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Costner, Rod Lake.
Crew: Director: John Lee Hancock. Screenplay: John Fusco. Camera (color): John Schwartzman. Editor: Robert Frazen. Music: Thomas Newman.
With: Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson, Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, Kim Dickens, Thomas Mann, William Sadler, W. Earl Brown, Emily Brobst, Edward Bossert.

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The Highwaymen

The untold true story of the legendary detectives who brought down Bonnie and Clyde. The untold true story of the legendary detectives who brought down Bonnie and Clyde. The untold true story of the legendary detectives who brought down Bonnie and Clyde.

John Lee Hancock
Kevin Costner
Woody Harrelson
Kathy Bates
524 User reviews
114 Critic reviews
58 Metascore
3 nominations

Frank Hamer

Maney Gault

Ma Ferguson

Lee Simmons

Deputy Ted Hinton

Deputy Bob Alcorn

Gladys Hamer

Henry Barrow

Ivy Methvin

Detective John Quinn

Agent Kendale

Wade McNabb
(as Joshua Caras)

Sheriff Henderson Jordan

Deputy Prentiss Oakley

Bonnie Parker

Clyde Barrow
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Trivia When Texas Ranger Frank Hamer was earlier portrayed by Denver Pyle in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) , he was characterized as an incompetent fool, prompting his widow Gladys to sue Warner Brothers for defamation of his character. In 1971 an out-of-court settlement was reached.
Goofs During the movie, "FBI" is used by characters and seen on the underside of a plane. The events of the movie took place from early Feb to May 23 in 1934. The Bureau of Investigation (BOI or BI for short) did not change its name to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) until 1935.

Maney Gault : Clyde might be king, but I'm a Texas Ranger, you little shit.

Crazy credits During the first part of the closing credits, photos are shown of the real people and scenes portrayed.
Connections Edited from The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950)
Soundtracks Afraid to Dream Written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel Performed by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra Courtesy of RCA Records By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

User reviews 524

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March 29, 2019 (United States)
United States
Official Netflix
Biệt Đội Xa Lộ
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Casey Silver Productions
Universal Pictures
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$49,000,000 (estimated)

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Runtime 2 hours 12 minutes
Dolby Digital

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The Highwaymen Reviews

I get the inevitable complaints of “too slow” and “not enough action”. Yet I found myself loving it – the slow burn, the prickly Costner, the subtle moral questions it tosses out there.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 21, 2022

Kevin Costner and [Woody Harr;elson, how can you go wrong?... they both do what they do well.

Full Review | Sep 30, 2021

"The Highwaymen" portrays the more upright ethics of the Depression era, law enforcement and media-wise, and feels vastly more realistic than its famous 1967 "Bonnie and Clyde" cinematic predecessor.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 26, 2021

The film is far too long but Costner and Harrelson make it worth your while what with their poignant, sincere performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Nov 14, 2020

It's unfair to hold such a modest effort to the high standard of the 1967 masterpiece. ... Still, it's a fine companion piece that's the type of old-fashioned, midrange, character-driven story that we don't get often enough these days.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 24, 2020

There's a reason why you probably haven't heard of Frank Hamer and Maney Gault before, and this lightweight film doesn't make much of a case for them having a story worth telling.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 2, 2020

The famous outlaws Bonnie & Clyde hardly get a single close-up in this fascinating study of the rangers brought out of retirement to track them down.

Full Review | Jun 26, 2020

The story behind the demise of legendary Bonnie & Clyde at the well-armed hands of two ageing Texas Rangers gets a solid, unhurried treatment here...Director John Lee Hancock directs the drama with a hard nose and with no love for the celebrity criminals.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 30, 2020

The Highwaymen wants to plumb its themes' moral ambiguity, but it wants to have a cut-and-dry ending even more.

Full Review | Jan 17, 2020

It's a shame, then, that this meeting of weirdo star power is never more than pedestrian...

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 8, 2020

A lot of why this works is because of [Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson's] chemistry together.

Full Review | Sep 23, 2019

Given its 50 million dollar budget, I can't help but wonder how that could have been better spent taking risks on lesser known, but more inspiring stories than this.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 17, 2019

The Highwaymen is a well-done period piece and stands out as an original Bonnie and Clyde themed tale.

Full Review | Original Score: 4 | Aug 15, 2019

Above all, what The Highwaymen is not is the Bonnie and Clyde story, shifting the focus in a way that proves unsatisfying.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2019

Costner and Harrelson take us on a new road towards Bonnie and Clyde.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 20, 2019

It isn't as dynamic or memorable as it could have been, but The Highwaymen still builds a compelling drama using a fascinating chapter from history combined with some solid acting and impressive camera work.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 8, 2019

A slow-moving Bonnie & Clyde manhunt Western that coasts by on the manliness and easy rapport of its leading men.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 4, 2019

The Highwaymen is made for a movie night in; unlike some of the platform's other offerings, no one will make the argument that you must see this perfectly OK film on the big screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 30, 2019

John Lee Hancock's intentions are honored and pure, but the celebrity commentaries and aimed cinematic crosshairs miss a more significant mark of meaty execution.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.5/10 | May 28, 2019

The Highwaymen tells a compelling story of the law chasing down Bonnie and Clyde. It was a fresh take, and I loved every second of it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 7, 2019

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‘the highwaymen’: film review | sxsw 2019.

John Lee Hancock tells the other side of the Bonnie & Clyde saga in 'The Highwaymen,' a detective story starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.

By THR Staff

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Shifting the viewer’s sympathies from a pair of remorselessly murderous folk heroes to the two lawmen trying to stop their crime spree, John Lee Hancock ‘s The Highwaymen casts Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as the former Texas Rangers who came out of retirement to hunt Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Self-consciously righteous about its agenda, admitting the darker sides of its heroes while in the same breath justifying their brutality, it’s a workmanlike period manhunt film made noteworthy only by the names of its villains. Certainly, this Netflix pic stands no chance of replacing Arthur Penn’s controversially nasty take on this story — except on Netflix, where his groundbreaking 1967 film is not available for streaming. Which is to say that, for the majority of movie consumers, John Lee Hancock might as well have made the only film about Bonnie and Clyde. Way to support film culture, Netflix.

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Costner and Harrelson team up to catch Bonnie and Clyde in The Highwaymen : EW review

Fifty years ago, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde fired the first salvo in the New Hollywood revolution by portraying the infamous outlaws as fight-the-man folk heroes. That subtext, not to mention Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s incendiary performances, turned the movie into a history lesson that felt surprisingly timely to the ’60s counterculture. It didn’t just tap into the zeitgeist, it struck it like a bolt of lightning. Bonnie and Clyde ’s cheeky tagline didn’t hurt either: “They’re young… they’re in love… and they kill people.”

Now, a half-century later, director John Lee Hancock’s The Highwaymen resurrects that story and retells it from the other side of the tommy gun, focusing on the two grizzled Texas Rangers who brought down the on-the-lam lovers in a hail of bullets. Traditional where Bonnie and Clyde was cutting-edge, Hancock’s film (which gets a two-week run in theaters before heading to Netflix on March 29) takes its time. It’s an old-fashioned road movie with two stars playing in the laid-back, mellow key of world-weary grumpiness.

It’s an odd choice, in a way. But it certainly helps that those two stars are Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson . They play Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, former partners who’ve been put out to pasture. And they’ve both been retired long enough to miss the thrill of the hunt. Costner’s Frank finds himself in a life of comfort and boredom. His wife (an excellent Kim Dickens) likes having him around at home, even though it’s hard to see why. He’s a curmudgeon with a pack-a-day rasp and pet boar as a guard dog. Harrelson’s Maney, on the other hand, is lost without his badge, living in a repossessed shack in Lubbock and still haunted by the horrors of a job that had him killing Mexicans by the dozen.

As Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s celebrity reign of terror spreads across the South, Texas governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (Kathy Bates) reluctantly agrees to pull the men out of retirement and sic them on the headline-grabbing antiheroes. And so, reunited behind the wheel of Frank’s Ford, the two former partners bicker and growl while they use their old-school bloodhound skills and play hunches to catch their glamorous quarry.

Costner and Harrelson have an easy, believable rapport. You like spending time in their company — even if they don’t much enjoy each other’s. And the main joy of the film is watching them play off one another, whether they’re cracking informants’ skulls or teasing each other about their frequent trips to the toilet.

Hancock, who’s probably best known for The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks (but should be best known for 2002’s The Rookie ), shoots the film with a poetic eye for the landscape and the sort of Depression-era details you’d see in a Walker Evans photograph. Still, his film could’ve used a little more sizzle and snap. It finally comes alive at the end, when the bloody date with destiny we all know is coming finally arrives in spectacularly violent fashion. Until then, The Highwaymen is a leisurely ride with a pair of actors who know how to do a lot by not doing too much. It won’t reinvent cinema the way that Bonnie and Clyde once did. But it’s a ride worth taking nonetheless. B

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‘The Highwaymen’ Review: Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson Take Down Bonnie and Clyde

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The legacy of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow has been so tied to Arthur Penn’s 1967 movie that it’s often mistaken as an authoritative account. But the robbers weren’t the only players in the sprawling legacy of Depression-era bank robbers who faced death in a hail of bullets after years on the run. The gory death scene at the end of Penn’s movie comes at the hands of a supporting player on the killer couple’s trail, but “ The Highwaymen ” flips the equation: As grizzled Texas Rangers Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) roam dusty southern roads on the outlaws’ trail, Bonnie and Clyde remain faceless monsters whose entire presence exists to fuel the men determined to take them down.

The saga of Hamer and Gault is such a natural alternative to this seminal American myth that it’s a wonder it took more than 50 years for someone to show the other side. Yet John Lee Hancock’s sturdy, well-acted drama unfolds as a slow-burn procedural: Think “True Detective” as the ultimate Dad Movie. Returning to a dusty backdrop he last explored with “The Alamo,” Hancock delivers his most palatable movie in some time, but “The Highwaymen” trades the narrative sophistication of its cinematic predecessor for a straightforward investigative saga that flattens this riveting saga into a familiar routine.

Still, the Netflix -produced drama has the sweep and maturity of an old-school Hollywood crime story. Cinematographer John Schwartzman’s ability to capture the yawning golden landscapes of America’s southern highways stand out as much as the appealing smarminess of the two macho leads. “The Highwaymen” wastes no time establishing the threat at hand, with a violent prison escape orchestrated by the robbers unfolding in slick, fast-paced terms, as America wrestles with the national obsession the killers have generated for their efforts.

Stern Texas Governor Ma Ferguson (Kathy Bates in a fun but fleeting cameo) rebuffs media attempts to characterize the killers as a pair of Robin Hoods by emphasizing their murderous streak, a point that movie will return to many times over. Jon Fusco’s screenplay reads like a pitch for its own existence, starting with this sample dialogue from the governor’s big strategy session on the crisis: “This is 1934, and you want to put cowboys on Bonnie and Clyde?”

Not just any cowboys! Hamer, who has retired to his palatial ranch with his wife and an affable pig, at first rebuffs attempts to take on the nation’s biggest outlaws. Having survived a hail of bullets in a botched operation years earlier, he finally gets off his porch to recruit some old partners. But when he winds his way to Gault’s home and spots the recovering alcoholic hobbling around his property, he turns the other way; Gault tracks Hamer down to the gun store to explain that he’s the only one left from their old posse, so they as well get to work.

The pair’s chemistry instantly takes hold: Costner, poker-faced and squinting in the heat, does his best to exude world-weariness in every passing glance, while Harrelson — who struggles to pull his own leathery features into a naughty smirk — suggests a playful energy beaten down by time. “You move like you’re 85,” Hamer says, but the odd couple still have some fight left them. This masculine Western duo were born to be together as much as the criminals in their crosshairs.

As the Rangers trail Bonnie and Clyde through a drab working-class milieu, contending with Clyde’s media taunts and tracking their progression through a handful of states, “The Highwaymen” falls into a pattern of sleepy exchanges and redundant visuals. It’s engaging enough to watch the officers’ ongoing frustration with the celebrity that the killers’ have amassed, even if the movie doesn’t dig that deep into it. When Harrelson finally gets the chance to clap back at some fans of the outlaw in a seedy bar, he lands the movie’s most endearing line: “Clyde might be king, but I’m a Texas Ranger, ya little shit!”

Indeed. As “The Highwaymen” plods along to the eventual final confrontation, it has already unleashed its best material, and the famed lethal showdown unfolds as a watered-down variation on the iconic scene from Penn’s version. Hancock has essentially made a feature-length Cliff Notes to that classic movie while remaining deferential to its legacy. There was more to Bonnie and Clyde than “Bonnie and Clyde,” but “The Highwaymen” falls short of making the case that the good guys had the better tale.

“The Highwaymen” premiered at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival. It launches globally on Netflix on March 29 with exclusive theatrical engagements beginning March 15.

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DVD & Streaming

The Highwaymen

Content caution.

In Theaters

March 22, 2019
Kevin Costner and Frank Hamer; Woody Harrelson as Maney Gault; Kim Dickens as Gladys Hamer; Emily Brobst as Bonnie Parker; Edward Bossert as Clyde Barrow; Kathy Bates as Governor Ma Ferguson; John Carroll Lynch as Lee Simmons

Home Release Date

March 29, 2019
John Lee Hancock

Distributor

Movie review.

Frank Hamer and Maney Gault are, frankly, way past their sell-by dates. They’re both gray-and-grizzled former Texas Rangers who were partners and pretty famous back in the days when there were Texas Rangers. But that was a long time ago as far as current Texas Governor Ma Ferguson is concerned.

I mean, it’s 1934! Ma has put a new police force into place, and she doesn’t even want to think about that antiquated style of have-gun-will-travel justice.

Problem is, well, there are two of ’em: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

This young hoodlum pair has been out robbing any place with a little cash. They drive souped-up cars, mow people down with top-shelf weaponry and consistently evade the thousand-man force trying to track them down. Why, even the vaunted FBI has been useless. And for some incomprehensible reason, the public seems to love their well-dressed, big-spending, bullet-spewing ways. I mean, women are going out of their way to dress and look like the fashionably cute Bonnie Parker.

It’s ridiculous!

But when this tommy gun-wielding pair kills a few more cops, fronts a prison break to free a couple of their thug pals and still slips by dozens of roadblocks, well, that’s the last straw. The papers and the public look to Ma and demand answers. So she reluctantly caves and gives the thumbs-up to call Hamer and Gault out of retirement.

Frank Hamer’s wife isn’t keen on the idea, but she knows the man she married. She knows he’s been bored out of his mind in retirement. And Maney Gault? Though he’s haunted by some killings in the past, he’s also a shell of his former self—completely lost without a badge and a gun.

So the two rusty wranglers reunite in the front seat of Frank’s Ford and bicker and growl their way back into the rhythms of an old-school manhunt. They may not have the FBI’s wiretaps or far-reaching man power. But they’ve got something better: They’ve got grit, they’ve got long-seasoned bloodhound skills, and they’ve still got keen eyes in their creased old faces. They remember how to ride the road, play a hunch and pull a trigger.

And sometimes, that’s all you need.

Positive Elements

After Hamer and Gault get back together, it’s easy to see both men are still plagued by memories of men they killed earlier in their careers. Especially Gault. And though Hamer rarely uses his pack-a-day rasp to voice those bottled-up feelings, you can see they’re eating at him, too.

That said, Gault suggests how these bouts of conscience and the ongoing torment of those past actions are what separate their deadly choices from those of the killers they’re hunting.

Both men desperately want to stop the wholesale killing going on, and they put their lives on the line to do so. And when they’re forced into situations in which they, too, must take lives to do their jobs, those choices are never taken lightly.

Illustrating that point, at the end of the film Hamer is offered a thousand dollars by a reporter to describe the bloody events of a shootout. Hamer sneers and walks away. Gault turns to the man and says, “Shame on you.”

Spiritual Elements

Characters use phrases such as “Lord knows ” and “Lord help me.” When Gault’s grandson learns that Gault has killed people in his job, the boy says, “You might go to Hell for it.”

Hamer has a talk with Clyde Barrow’s father in which they discuss Clyde’s “dark soul.” The elder Barrow insists that his son was driven to darkness. Then Hamer relays a personal story of his own, proclaiming that we all choose for good or evil. He also states that he was intending to go to seminary as a young man.

Sexual Content

Hamer and his wife kiss. A woman at a bar wears a low-cut, cleavage-baring dress.

Violent Content

At the beginning of the movie, someone recounts how Bonnie and Clyde killed a man for nothing more than $4 and a tank of gas. And we hear other stories of the men and women they have mowed down with thoughtless disregard. Gault also tells a story about how he accidentally killed an innocent 15-year-old in the course of attacking a large group of drunken killers.

We see several instances of Bonnie and Clyde’s heartless murders, too, often at point-blank range. People are riddled with machine gun and shotgun fire. In one case, they shoot two motorcycle cops, after which Bonnie walks up and blasts one writhing man squarely in the face. The camera first watches that blood-spewing viciousness from a distance; later, we see the bloodily pulped face—featuring torn flesh and bone—and the subsequent blood pool from an overhead camera angle.

We also know how this tale ends, so we see the criminal couple riddled with hundreds of rounds while sitting in their car. When Hamer leans in to check the criminals, the camera lingers on gruesome wounds in the victims’ faces and torsos. Later, as the dead couple and their car are towed through a local town, a large crowd of Bonnie and Clyde fans cry out in anguish and rush the car, clawing and pulling at the bloody corpses inside.

Hamer (as well as the camera) looks at black-and-white photos of dead, bloody victims.

At one point Hamer gets angry and punches a man in the face, slamming him into the back of a vehicle and driving him to the ground. Gault gets jumped in a bathroom, then slams one man around and shoves his face in a toilet while holding a gun on two others. We hear that Hamer still has 16 bullets in his body from past gun battles.

Crude or Profane Language

Five s-words and five uses of “a–” and “b–ch” are joined by 10 uses each of “h—” and “d–n.” God’s name is combined with “d–n” seven times. We hear a couple exclamations of “dear lord” and “Judas priest.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

This is a time when cigarettes were king, so nearly everyone is puffing at some point. In fact, some of Hamer and Gault’s tracking is directly connected to who smokes what. They also make note of Bonnie’s alcohol habits—she discards booze bottles and bottles of Laudanum (an opium tincture painkiller).

Gault has a hip flask that he sips from regularly. We see him and others knocking back shots at a bar.

Other Negative Elements

Gault needs to relieve himself repeatedly. The camera watches from behind as he does so on bushes and behind objects. While using a urinal, he’s approached by thugs and ends up comically urinating on them, too.

In spite of Bonnie and Clyde’s murderous reputation, large groups of people idolize them as superstars. In fact, some authentic black-and-white photos in the credits show thousands and thousands of mourners attending the separate funerals of the pair.

Many people only know the story of the murderous Bonnie and Clyde from the 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. That story romanticized and glamourized its machine gun-toting protagonist couple into young, fight-the-man types, heroes whose screen personas reflected the rebellious attitude of the era. In fact, the film became known in part for helping to usher in an age of—as Time magazine put it—”New Cinema Violence.”

That Hollywood reimagining also featured a bumbling, ham-fisted cop named Hamer who eventually stumbled his way into slaughtering the antiheroes. But The Highwaymen takes a different tack, telling its story from that former Texas Ranger’s perspective.

This other-side-of-the-Tommy-gun version of the historical tale is still plenty violent, but its gore is seen with a purposely disapproving eye. No flash or romance here. When we see and hear a shotgun roar, we’re also shown the terrible results—humanity senselessly reduced to pools of blood, torn flesh and bone.

In that sense, this is a much more slowly paced and thoughtful film than the ’60s “classic.” As heroes Hamer and Gault gather clues, track their killers, smoke and talk, they’re almost theological in their quiet musings on the violence, corruption and folly of our fallen world.

How does one turn that corner to a darkened soul? they wonder. Where is the line between killing and justice? How does a reasoned person get swept up in idolizing something foul and evil?

Cinematic contemplations here give viewers something to chew on. But it’s not always a pleasant mouthful. Nor is it intended for younger viewers.

“My children shouldn’t see this. They’re not ready for it,” Highwaymen star Kevin Costner said in an IMDb interview. And Costner is unquestionably correct. Whether seen on the big screen or streamed on a small screen at home, this Netflix-distributed pic deserves as much thought before seeing it, as it might potentially inspire after.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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The Highwaymen Is a Pleasant Throwback of a Movie

Netflix’s latest offering tells the story of Bonnie and Clyde from the perspective of the lawmen—played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson—who pursued and killed them.

What do you call a film that takes place too recently to be considered a Western but not recently enough to be a neo-Western? A late-period Western? A retro-neo-Western? A mid-Western?

Whichever term you prefer, feel free to attach it to the Netflix movie The Highwaymen , currently enjoying a small theatrical run and, as of Friday, streaming on the service. A tale of hard men chasing outlaws across dusty byways, it is a sturdy saga that fulfills all the obligations of the classic Western, just without the horses and six-shooters.

Following in the footsteps of such narrative inversions as John Gardner’s Grendel and Gregory Maguire’s Wicked , the film tells a familiar story from an unfamiliar vantage. Specifically, it describes the final 1934 crime spree of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow—vividly memorialized, of course, by Arthur Penn in his 1967 tour de force, Bonnie and Clyde —but from the perspective of the lawmen who hunted the couple across the South and Midwest and ultimately gunned them down in Louisiana.

Said lawmen are the legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and his partner, Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson). Both had left the Rangers due to the reelection of the vehemently anti-Ranger Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (Kathy Bates) as Texas governor. But following Parker and Barrow’s lethal raid on the Eastham prison farm, Hamer was persuaded to accept a special commission. Technically, he was assigned to the Texas Highway Patrol; in actuality, he was entrusted with bringing the fugitives to justice—ideally, a justice they would enjoy in the hereafter. In this undertaking (so to speak), he enlisted the help of Gault.

What follows is largely a tale of near misses. Parker and Barrow are consistently a step ahead of Hamer and Gault as the criminals crisscross state lines—Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Louisiana—leaving a stream of bodies in their wake. Throughout most of the film, the outlaws themselves are seen only in glimpses, or from a distance: the perfect whale for Hamer’s Ahab.

It’s hardly an insult to acknowledge that The Highwaymen is no classic on the level of Bonnie and Clyde . But it is, in its way, the perfect corrective to Penn’s film. The latter, so attuned to the countercultural mood of the late 1960s, dripped with style and sex appeal in presenting its protagonists as charismatic antiheroes. By contrast, The Highwaymen is, in true Western fashion, staid and direct, a story of law and order in which—if it comes down to it—order is the more important of the two outcomes. Forget the flash and glamour of youth. This is essentially the story of a grumpy old man, Hamer, who returns from vacation to discover, with horror, what the kids have been up to while he’s been away. Given that what they’ve been up to is mass murder, this interpretation seems considerably more reasonable than the glamorization offered by Penn.

The solid script, by John Fusco (who also wrote the forever-underrated neo-Western Thunderheart ), had kicked around Hollywood long enough that Paul Newman and Robert Redford were once considered for the leads. It’s a bit of a surprise that the project lingered as long as it did, given a premise so intriguing. The fact that the director, John Lee Hancock ( The Blind Side , Saving Mr. Banks ), does not notably elevate the material is almost beside the point: He performs the more important duty of Not Screwing It Up. In contrast to so many contemporary films, The Highwaymen is not larded with unnecessary backstories and love interests and hidden motivations. It simply is what it is—which, in Hollywood terms, might be simultaneously the most subversive and the most reactionary thing about it.

Harrelson is good as Gault, but his role is very much to set a contrast with Costner’s Hamer. Gault is the joker, the drinker, the one who sees both sides, the one who signed on largely because he had nothing else to do. The most interesting element of Harrelson’s performance might be the way it brings him full circle from 1994’s Natural Born Killers , a film in which he played one half of a murderous, road-tripping couple explicitly inspired by Bonnie and Clyde.

Costner’s portrayal of Hamer—stoic, unforgiving, sure of his own righteousness—however, gives a hint that we might have more to look forward to in the actor’s post-stardom career than expected. From his peak in The Untouchables and Field of Dreams and JFK , Costner was always a bit of a square, a fuddy-duddy, a dad. (It’s worth noting that one of his very best roles was when he was cast against type as a crook in A Perfect World , which was written by Hancock.) Now that he’s 64, Costner has to some degree aged into his long-standing onscreen persona. What was once painfully cloying is now merely crotchety—not ideal, perhaps, but trending in the right direction.

Indeed, if there’s a principal disappointment in The Highwaymen , it’s that rather than drilling down on Hamer (a fascinating figure ), it opts for the relative security of the buddy movie. In actuality, Gault joined Hamer only toward the end of the Parker-Barrows pursuit, in time for the final, brutal shoot-out in Bienville Parish. Until then, Hamer had mostly followed his quarry alone. It’s not hard to see why Fusco and Hancock chose to bring Harrelson in as an interlocutor for their tightly wound avenger. Conveying a character’s inner life with little dialogue or other interaction is a tricky exercise. But when done well—say, by Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men —it can be mesmerizing. The filmmakers might have failed had they aimed higher, but the ceiling for the movie would have been raised considerably.

There is one way, however, in which The Highwaymen is a clear success. Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde , in its eager celebration of violent anarchy against stultifying authority, invented a scene in which the protagonists capture and humiliate Hamer, played in that film by Denver Pyle. (In real life, it appears that Hamer never laid eyes on Parker and Barrow until he helped kill them in the Louisiana ambush.) In 1971, Hamer’s family successfully sued Warner Bros. for this fabrication, winning an undisclosed settlement but leaving Penn’s version of the tale essentially undisturbed. The Highwaymen will never penetrate public consciousness the way Bonnie and Clyde did, nor should it. But what actually took place between Hamer, Parker, and Barrows—or at least a rough approximation—is now available to anyone with access to Netflix. Consider it Frank Hamer’s final revenge.

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The highwaymen, common sense media reviewers.

Retired Rangers track Bonnie & Clyde; some violent images.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

With perseverance, resourcefulness, and courage, g

Heroes are unassuming, professional, relentless pu

Gunplay, machine gun fire, bloody bodies strewn on

Occasional swearing includes "s--t," "goddamn," "a

Coca-Cola. A number of gun manufacturers are menti

One hero has issues with alcohol abuse, is seen dr

Positive Messages

With perseverance, resourcefulness, and courage, good triumphs over evil. Addresses "celebrity" in its most heinous form.

Positive Role Models

Heroes are unassuming, professional, relentless pursuers whose efforts are rewarded.

Violence & Scariness

Gunplay, machine gun fire, bloody bodies strewn on highways. A prison escape results in the death of a guard. Climactic scene is a blood bath -- two villains under assault killed in a car.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional swearing includes "s--t," "goddamn," "ass," "hell," "son of a bitch." Insults: "gimp," "high-flying sissy." A man urinates off-camera.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Coca-Cola. A number of gun manufacturers are mentioned.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

One hero has issues with alcohol abuse, is seen drinking. Characters smoke cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Highwaymen is the dramatic representation of the tracking and capture of Bonnie and Clyde, two infamous criminals who robbed and killed with abandon in the Central United States in 1934. Though the couple was romanticized in a classic 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde , this new film serves to portray the meticulous, determined Frank Hamer and his partner, Maney Gault, two retired Texas Rangers who actually led the successful effort to end the violent crime spree. Other than a wild gun battle that occurs during a prison escape, the movie avoids the young couple's actual crimes, opting to show the aftermath of their sociopathic behavior (i.e., bodies left behind). The climactic sequence is a literal depiction of the actual event: when hundreds of bullets found their targets in a car on a country road. It's a very violent, bloody sequence. Moderate cursing is heard throughout, including "damn," "ass," "s--t," and "hell" as well as insults: "high-flying sissy," "gimp." One leading character, known to have a problem with alcohol, drinks in secret in multiple scenes. Characters smoke cigarettes. A notable element in the film, one that might inspire thoughtful discussion, is the celebrity status given the two killers ... perhaps a glimpse of infamous media stars in later years. Mature teens only. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (5)
Kids say (6)

Based on 5 parent reviews

No character development or anything beyond "the chase"

What's the story.

THE HIGHWAYMEN, a movie based on actual events, pays tribute to Frank Hamer ( Kevin Costner ) and Maney Gault ( Woody Harrelson ), the two aging Texas Rangers who were called upon to bring their skills and resourcefulness to the manhunt for the legendary Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The infamous couple had evaded capture time and again. More than a thousand law enforcement officers, including members of the FBI, were assigned to the case in 1934, when Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson ( Kathy Bates ), the first female governor in Texas, elicited the services of Hamer and Gault. The Rangers had been disbanded, were scorned and mocked, so Ferguson's assignment of the two men was hardly taken seriously, despite their well-earned reputation for effectiveness. Hamer and Gault, aware that their age and physicality didn't inspire trust, were challenged, particularly by the FBI, as they carefully ran down leads that others had overlooked. Fortunately, youth and agility aren't all that matter in such a demanding assignment, and Hamer's and Gault's successful efforts became the stuff of legends, as well.

Is It Any Good?

Straightforward storytelling and solid performances by Costner and Harrelson make for a fine, though far less dynamic, partner to 1967's dazzling, classic Bonnie and Clyde . The Highwaymen is part police procedural, part myth-buster, and part buddy tale. The movie looks great; both cinematographer John Schwartzman and the production design team enhance director John Lee Hancock 's vision of time and place; everything about the film feels authentic. Regrettably, in maintaining that accuracy, there's not a lot to surprise audiences. Hamer and Gault's machinations -- traversing Texas and venturing across its borders to focus on the villains' natural predilection for "going home" -- are smart but not always dramatic. And Hamer's stoicism doesn't allow for a spirited relationship with his partner. Still, it's an admirable movie that gives a very honest look at the flip side of a legendary historical event.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the fact that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, sociopathic killers, were very early "media celebrities" with thousands of "fans." What role do you think the Great Depression played in their story being romanticized? Find out more about why they tapped into the spirit of the time in which they lived. In today's culture of media superstars, how do you think they would be perceived?

The filmmakers chose to shoot the climactic sequence on the actual stretch of road upon which Bonnie and Clyde were killed by law enforcement. Why would they make that effort? How do you think it impacted the actors who were playing the parts? How does authenticity enrich the moviemaking and moviegoing experiences?

How does The Highwaymen emphasize such character strengths as perseverance , teamwork , and courage ?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : March 29, 2019
Cast : Kevin Costner , Woody Harrelson , Kathy Bates
Director : John Lee Hancock
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Netflix
Genre : Drama
Topics : Friendship , History
Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 132 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : strong violence and bloody images
Last updated : February 18, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Dwayne Johnson & Ryan Reynolds' Feud Is Bad News For Netflix's Most-Watched Franchise

Mike flanagan’s next stephen king movie marks a huge change from his last 12 horror movies & shows (we’re excited), late night with the devil's box office & streaming success makes up for $45 million bomb from last year, the highwaymen is a respectable tribute to the men who brought notorious criminals to justice, though it's not always the most engaging watch..

Crime drama The Highwaymen , which chronicles Frank Hamer and Maney Gault's pursuit of Bonnie and Clyde, was in development for a number of years and was at one point envisioned as a potential vehicle for Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Eventually, Netflix got their hands on the project and Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson signed on as the leads, finally giving the film momentum after lingering for more than a decade. There was certainly a lot of potential here for a gripping and captivating entry into this tried and true genre, but director John Lee Hancock and company don't quite hit all the marks. The Highwaymen is a respectable tribute to the men who brought notorious criminals to justice, though it's not always the most engaging watch.

With Hancock at the helm, The Highwaymen takes a classical dramatic approach to its subject matter, which is fitting given Hamer and Gault's status as aging law enforcers wondering if they still have what it takes to get the job done. The end result is a handsome-looking period piece, complemented by the efforts of production designer Michael Corenblith and costume designer Daniel Orlandi. The Highwaymen captures a number of 1930s details, transporting viewers back to that era with style and sophistication. The cinematography by John Schwartzman is also a nice touch, giving the film the look and feel of something from yesteryear.

Unfortunately, this also works against The Highwaymen in some respects. While some viewers will appreciate its old school sensibilities, Hancock doesn't necessarily bring anything new to the table, handling the character building moments and occasional set piece with workmanlike proficiency. Despite the high stakes of pursuing Bonnie and Clyde permeating throughout the picture, The Highwaymen isn't always riveting, which at times can hurt the pacing during the 132-minute runtime. This isn't to say Hancock does a poor job directing the film - he more than gets the job done - but there isn't anything all that memorable that'll stick once the credits roll.

Some of the issues here can be accredited to John Fusco's script, which is a little uneven. The writer deserves points for attempting to explore the effects of violence on a seasoned Texas Ranger, but struggles when it comes to painting a compelling portrait of Bonnie and Clyde. The Highwaymen does touch on the couple's celebrity status within the eyes of the general public, but still takes a generally black-and-white approach to the core conflict. Hamer and Gault are definitely the "good guys" here, trying to bring down vicious cop killers. In some ways, this does work for the purposes of the movie (cutaways to some of Bonnie and Clyde's evil deeds underscore the threat they represent), but the infamous duo are largely presented as faceless villains rather than intriguing characters in their own right.

In regards to the performances, Costner and Harrelson ably carry the film on their shoulders, delivering the types of turns viewers should come to expect. The former is a gruff and tough lawman who firmly believes in justice, while the latter is a bit more personable - but still has a no-nonsense streak when the time calls for it. Costner and Harrelson have easygoing chemistry with each other, convincingly feeling like two old friends banding back together for one last adventure. There's a sense of real history between the two that comes through via their mannerisms, interactions, and extended dialogue passages. Sadly, many of the supporting players here (including Hamer and Gault's respective families) draw the short straw and aren't given much to work with. None of the performances here are bad, but outside of the two protagonists, nobody leaves a real impression and are just there to serve specific roles in the story.

All in all, Netflix seems like the proper platform for a mid-budget film like The Highwaymen , which easily would have gotten lost in the shuffle if it had gone against major studio tentpoles or even the incoming awards fare that'll hit theaters later this year. It's a fine, if largely unremarkable, film that will hopefully find its target audience on streaming. For viewers of a certain age, The Highwaymen will probably be worth a watch, but it's far from the best original Netflix film to come out in recent months. Unless one is a serious fan of the genre, time period, or main stars involved, there frankly isn't too much to highly recommend.

The Highwaymen is now streaming through Netflix. It runs 132 minutes and is rated R for some strong violence and bloody images.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

Key Release Dates

The highwaymen, our rating:.

Movie Reviews
2.5 star movies

‘The Highwaymen’ Review: Bonnie and Clyde Who? Meet the Men Who Killed Them

By David Fear

In 1934, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker drove into an ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They had come there with the intent of laying low while visiting fellow gang member Henry Methvin’s family home. A number of policemen — and two Texas Rangers — opened fire on them as their stolen car sped down a country road. We know that, by the time they were taken down, the duo had been on a two-year-long crime wave. We know that they had become folk heroes, worshipped by a public who viewed them as modern-day Robin Hoods and who ate up Parker’s poems when they were published in newspapers. We also know that “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” apparently played every time they killed someone and that they looked exactly like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. They were media creations in life. They continued to be so long after the hot-lead party.

Thanks to Arthur Penn’s groundbreaking 1967 movie, we have a certain image of these beautiful, young, homicidal killers. As for the two Lone Star state lawmen that were primarily responsible for sending the couple to meet their maker, well, they’re not quite as well know outside of certain circles — even if one of them is the single most legendary Texas Ranger in the history of the organization. John Lee Hancock’s The Highwaymen wants to rectify this situation. It has not come to praise Bonnie and Clyde; it has come to bury them, or at least part of their myth, but that isn’t the primary goal. Rather, this conservative corrective wants to focus on the real heroes, rather than the antiheroes, of this story. It strives to give Frank Hamer and Maney Gault top billing in the history books, as well their own epic tale of Tommy Guns and Model T car chases and dapper hats. The fact that it does this in a sort of generic classic-cinema mode will thrill some folks and frustrate others. “They don’t make ’em like this anymore” will be used as both a compliment and an insult. Both interpretations apply.

What’s indisputable, however, is that it’s the good guys who get the marquee-name, movie-star treatment this time around. We’ve already seen Barrow stage an elaborate prison break for his old partners in crime, Parker let off machine-gun rounds in a field and Kathy Bates’ Ma Ferguson bemoaning the bad press of it all by the time we finally meet Hamer — and damned if he doesn’t look like Kevin Costner . The Untouchables ‘ leading man has aged into his weathered, eminence grise period like a fine claret, the kind of actor for whom grizzled cowboys and flint-hard badgeholders are a perfect, boot-cut fit. Give the man a Texas Ranger role that combines both, and watch him work that old-school stoic male thing to a tee. In fact, it’s hard not to view his retired Hamer, dragged back into duty and taking to it once again like a hound bred to hunt, as Eliot Ness with a Texas twang. The best thing about The Highwaymen by a long shot is seeing Costner tap back into that Gary Cooper mode he once perfected and add older, wiser touches to it. (You could say the same thing about his Succession -only-it’s-on-a-cattle-ranch TV show from last year, Yellowstone . )

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That, and the double act he forms with his costar. After consulting with his long-suffering wife (bless you for doing what you can with so little, Kim Dickens), Frank heads to Lubbock for guns — lots of them — and his old partner, Maney Gault. This is where Woody Harrelson comes in. Comic relief, equally cranky old cuss, fellow hick for the city-slicker feds to underestimate: He is the Ying to Hamer’s Yang, one perfectly capable of shoving a switchblade-wielding punk’s head into a toilet. More importantly, he’s also the man’s conscience, the one who keeps reminding his friend that an insistence about dead or alive not being an option may be taking a moral toll on him. “She’s such an itty-bitty thing,” Gault says, laying out one of Parker’s dresses when they come upon the gang’s hideout. The look that Harrelson gives follows that statement, which suggests a profound regret that they’re going to have to pull the trigger, suggests a nuance that the rest of the film only flirts with. It’s too busy getting the gents settled into a nice groove of bantering and being what The Wire ‘s McNulty called “good police,” sussing out crime scenes and running down suspects and staking out houses. If you build a pattern-based dragnet, they will come.

It’s not a coincidence that the faces of the outlaws themselves are rarely seen, that the camera obscures their visages or keeps them out of focus; they have had enough of the limelight, the movie suggests. (They even give Bonnie a pronounced limp, the result of a injury right before our story picks up their trail — her Dunaway glamour done away with.) When we finally do get a full-fledged look at these gangsters, it’s the logical conclusion to the tension-release schematic that’s been fueling the narrative’s momentum. And it’s partially to emphasize that they were just kids, less a product of their time than of both burgeoning tabloid and youth cultures. That last one in particular is a real bee in the movie’s bonnet: The most inadvertently funny scene involves Costner driving down the highway, spotting a water tower with pro-Bonnie and Clyde graffiti, then almost getting run off the road by a bunch of joyriding youngsters. You can practically hear him thinking, You damn kids, ruining this fine country of ours! Get off the highway and, just for good measure, my lawn! (Let’s not even get into how it treats Thomas Mann’s dim, smitten twentysomething policeman.)

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So no, this isn’t your hippie pinko father’s take on the Barrow/Parker story, though it may be your grandfather’s, and is definitely your great-grandfather’s. And you don’t have to be AARP-aged to appreciate what Costner and Harrelson are doing, or to audibly squeal when character actors like W. Earl Brown and John Carroll Lynch show up, or to be impressed by the period-piece production design and John Schwartzman’s tony cinematography. As for digging the distinct law-and-order vibe, however, it may help if you voted for Nixon twice. The Highwaymen does what it needs to in terms of handing the spotlight over to the men who ended “that jackass and his girlfriend’s” reign of terror and reminding us that “Robin Hood never shot a gas attendant point blank in the face for four dollars.” If you think of it as an other-side-of-the-story act of reclamation — a response track — it succeeds. Asking any more of this “when men were men” [ insert weary sigh here ] throwback is likely to earn you nothing more than a steely, Costner-stye stare of contempt.

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Movie Review – The Highwaymen (2019)

March 22, 2019 by Robert Kojder

The Highwaymen , 2019.

Directed by John Lee Hancock. Starring Woody Harrelson, Kevin Costner, Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, Kim Dickens, Thomas Mann, W. Earl Brown, Emily Brobst, and Edward Bossert.

A pair of police officers come out of retirement to catch the infamous outlaws Bonnie & Clyde.

I’m all for bad ideas that could prove me wrong and turn out excellent. And let’s face it, a movie about the rather uninteresting former Texas Rangers that took down notorious killers and bank robbers Bonnie & Clyde in the 1930s is about as lame as they come. The real crime is that Bonnie & Clyde themselves have about five minutes of screen time in a movie that is well over two hours long (without a single justification for reaching that bloated length).

Yes, The Highwaymen (flatly directed by The Blind Side’s John Lee Hancock) does center on a pair of aged once upon a time police officers that went about their work during a looser era, but the movie also wants to make a juxtaposition between fame for the wrong reasons and those that get no attention for putting their lives on the line. The closest it comes to making any kind of worthwhile statement is the ending (which you probably might not even make it to considering how procedurally boring everything unfolds), thanks to some images that finally contrast the above. There is also a good line driving home that this feud between the different parties was highly personal, and that bringing down Bonnie & Clyde was not about yanking the fame out from underneath them. But here’s the thing, these officers never wanted fame, so making a film about them is somewhat counterproductive, especially considering there is nothing to write home about regarding their characters.

It also doesn’t help that Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson have zero chemistry together. They are both grizzled but capable and with their mind on the manhunt, while also being a couple of mundane family men that have no real distinguishable personality traits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie before where Woody Harrelson failed to give one laugh, but The Highwaymen does just that. Not to mention, nothing very exciting happens throughout the movie; all they do is drive around and talk to different contacts that may have some information. It’s kind of like watching someone play the video game LA Noire : drive somewhere, interrogate people for whatever juicy details you can get someone to slip, and rinse and repeat until the final showdown where the bullets finally fly. The key difference is that one of these experiences actually has good writing.

Towards the end, there’s a part where the officers monologue about how they became killers, and it was long before that point I had already checked out and wanted Bonnie & Clyde to bite the dust. Their death sequence is about as cathartic for the audience as these characters because we know the movie is finally about to mercifully come to an end. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t tell you who played Bonnie or Clyde and I really don’t care. The movie gives them nothing to do which, once again, feels like a crucial misstep since the themes of the movie want to explore both sides. It’s nice whenever they show up to kill someone, but it’s over far too soon and leaves you wanting more, most likely because Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson are about as entertaining here as pieces of wood. If their characters were able to carry the movie, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem.

There are also some other supporting characters played by notable actors such as Kathy Bates and Thomas Mann, but their inclusion is also largely pointless. Kathy Bates especially could be removed from the entire movie without affecting the plot, and while you would still have an insufferably boring one, you would have an insufferably boring film that’s about 10 minutes shorter. Aside from the actual takedowns of Bonnie & Clyde (which is quite awesome in its glorious overkill), there is one scene I can remember being compelled to pay attention to, a moment where Kevin Costner has a conversation with Clyde’s father about the makings of a mass criminal and more. I’m actually convinced that every supporting character in this movie is more interesting than the Texas Rangers, even the ones that serve no purpose.

But if for whatever reason Kevin Costner constantly chastising Woody Harrelson for how often he has to pee sounds like the pinnacle of comedy to you, then I suppose check it out. The only reason I’m willing to give The Highwaymen a second star is at least the period details are fun to look at and crafted with care, plus it actually finds something meaningful to say in its closing moments. So maybe just watch the final 20 minutes

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, friend me on Facebook, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd , check out my personal non-Flickering Myth affiliated Patreon , or email me at [email protected]

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Film Review – The Highwaymen (2019)

In a time where the revisionist Western (and even the revisionist-revisionist Western) are typical the only stories of the West getting the green light, The Highwaymen goes in the opposite direction, preferring a classical approach full of full-body heroes and villains. Brooding but at times boring, Netflix’s The Highwaymen switches the script on the story of America’s most cinematic killing spree.

The following review will be spoiler free.

Directed By: John Lee Hancock

Written By: John Fusco

Starring: Kevin Costner , Woody Harrelson , Kathy Bates , Kim Dickens, John Carroll Lynch , Thomas Mann, Emily Brobst, and W. Earl Brown

The outlaws made headlines. The lawmen made history. The Highwaymen follows the untold true story of the legendary detectives who brought down Bonnie and Clyde. When the full force of the FBI and the latest forensic technology aren’t enough to capture the nation’s most notorious criminals, two former Texas Rangers (Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson) must rely on their gut instincts and old school skills to get the job done.

Fine Visual Character

The thrilling, bloody and ultimately romanticized story of Bonnie and Clyde is one defined by a now iconic climactic moment on a May morning, 1934. 130 rounds of ammunition were let loose on the free-killing couple after they came to a stop on a dusty road in rural Louisiana to speak with an associate. Over the year’s countless renditions of the Bonnie and Clyde story have retold the story with this as its set piece. Most famous of all is Arthur Penn’s 1967 landmark picture. Most have concentrated their narratives on the intriguing killers pulling over in the dust. But director John Lee Hancock’s The Highwaymen re-tells this moment, a few meters to the left, behind the pine trees, from the resolute, all-American perspectives of the lawmen that tracked them down.

The Highwaymen follows Frank Hamer — the Texas Ranger who gunned down the deadly couple. In retirement after his unit was disbanded he is shepherded back into the field by a flailing Texas officials. Hamer is aging and haunted, but dedicated. So too is his wise cracking former partner Maney Gault, who trades the bottle for a chance to catch America’s Most Wanted. The pair operate somewhere in between the law and the bad guys, facing opposition not just from their targets but just about every traditional ally you could imagine including an obnoxious FBI team, the Texas authorities and each and every badge abiding face in and out of state-limits.

Kathy Bates and Arvin Combs in The Highwaymen (2019)

Image via IMDb.

This fine set up turns out to unfortunately be something of a mixed bag. The Highwaymen is an attempt by Netflix to once again diversify its content for a range of audiences. Recently its focused hard on thrillers but this one is a little different. Specifically it’s a stab at the historical drama niche, and on historic properties alone — it is not bad. One cannot fault the cinematographer John Schwartzman, for his work on this film is undeniably impressive. The Highwaymen ‘s attention to 1930’s period detail is stunning. Likewise crisp images of a sprawling, poverty-stricken, depression era rural America, ensure visual splendor is one of the film’s strongest qualities. Extreme long shots of the era’s skinny and elongated cars, sky-high in novelty value cars trekking up and down America’s dusty back roads, evoke the sort of imagery that make traditional Westerns visually appealing. But it’s here the nods to that genre should be left.

image via Hollywood Reporter

Highway to Boredom

In aiming to exonerate Hamer, portrayed as something of a joke in Penn’s version, screenwriter John Fusco leans too heavy on the Western archetypal hero. Allusions are frequently made to their past adventures in Mexico, never fully explained to the audience. An implausible and highly expository scene sees Hamer reveal a dark childhood event to Clyde’s own father. The effect of it all is a confusing tone and uninteresting characters. The film seems fixated on righting the wrongs of the ’67 version. The Barrow Gang itself is given almost zero screen-time. When they are seen Bonnie’s limp is played up as much as possible in order to dispel any associations with Faye Dunaway’s sexualized heroine. This overbearing obsession with condemning the couple’s perverse fame, leaves it bordering on dull at times. One scene exists purely to showcase Hamer beat the living daylights out of a pro-Barrow gas station owner.

In moments the script threatens to explore a couple of interesting directions. However, never with any conviction. The Ranger’s marvel at new policing technologies, in addition to the men’s anxieties about shooting a “lady murderer” arouse brief interest. Instead we are treated to a basic cops and robbers story sorely lacking creativity . The cast does fine with what they are given. Hamer, while somewhat conventionally drawn, is played brilliantly by an aging, uber stoic Kevin Costner. Opposite him Harrelson bring his trademark wit to a dead-end sidekick role. Unfortunately the talents of Bates and Kim Dickens are relegated to a handful of scenes between them.

Final Thoughts

While it won’t be remembered anywhere near the more famous incarnation, The Highwaymen ’s desired audience of conservative minded folks disgusted by any cinematic sympathy with criminality will perhaps appreciate it. The film employs good visuals and fine performances. But this isn’t enough to make interesting. The Highwaymen ‘s shaky script wears itself out with frantically setting the historic record straight even at the cost of exciting cinema.

image via Vanity Fair

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[…] janitor fits closer to your typical Western hero. His sports car could easily have been a horse, riding into town while minding his own business, […]

[…] at Ashecliffe, Teddy and Chuck are led through the hospital grounds by Deputy Warden McPherson (John Caroll Lynch). The two learn that behind the electrified wire and within the dank, prison-like walls, are three […]

It had its moments. Trouble was they were all moments from other movies

Well, I suppose a highway to boredom is better than a highway to hell.

I’m a Woody fan so I watched this the other night. Your review nails it. Woody aids relief and humanity but the movie often dragged, leaving me to sigh and wait for the inevitable ending. Bates and Dickens were so wasted but what else could be done with them, given the history and the script?

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"I'm Your Number One Fan": The 15 Best Kathy Bates Movies, Ranked

"You're just another lying ol' dirty birdie."

Kathy Bates is undoubtedly one of the most skilled and talented actresses in the industry today, with a successful career spanning over 50 years. Before pursuing acting, the star studied theatre and later moved to New York City to create her dream career. Her breakthrough role came in the form of a movie adaptation of Stephen King 's Misery , which earned Bates the distinction of being the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress in a horror/thriller genre picture.

Even after decades in the industry, this award-winning actress continues to flourish in her craft. Some of her recent works include the coming-of-age film Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret , and the drama The Miracle Club . With a plethora of iconic projects on her resumé, it's difficult to choose the actress' best movie. However, Bates' name is closely related to a few projects in which she towers above her surroundings. The best Kathy Bates movies are gripping, layered, and poignant, largely thanks to the large, meaningful role she plays .

15 'The Highwaymen' (2019)

Appeared as ma ferguson.

The Highwaymen tells the untold true story about the lawmen who brought down the infamous American robbery team, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow . Directed by John Lee Hancock , the film counts on many well-known faces and makes for a good way to kill time. Bates plays Miriam "Ma" Ferguson , the first elected female chief executive of Texas.

Although slow-moving (some may find it slightly boring), this Netflix original movie is a sincere, character-driven period piece that is still enjoyable. Part of what makes it good is how it flips the script and presents viewers with an innovative take on the story we all know. The Highwaymen offers Bates a role worthy of her talents, even if the story isn't necessarily the best .

The Highwaymen

*Availability in US

Not available

14 'Shadows and Fog' (1991)

Appeared as an unnamed sex worker.

Shadows and Fog is a 1991 black-and-white comedy that illustrates a bookkeeper's ( Woody Allen ) quest to find a vigilant group determined to catch a murderer after being awakened by his neighbors who ask for his help. This eventually leads him to meet a sword swallower ( Mia Farrow , who was the filmmaker’s wife then) from the visiting circus. Bates plays an unnamed sex worker.

This tribute to German Expressionism with the writer Franz Kafka in theme by the controversial director, writer, and actor Woody Allen is considered one of his most underappreciated works by critics. Nevertheless, it is definitely not for everyone; Allen's idiosyncrasies are on full display, making Shadows and Fog a kind of love-it-or-hate-it situation. Plus, Bates' role is quite small in this movie .

Rent on Amazon

13 'On the Basis of Sex' (2018)

Appeared as dorothy kenyon.

This great female-directed drama led by Felicity Jones serves as a biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg . On the Basis of Sex introduces viewers to the American lawyer and jurist's fight for equal rights, including the cases she handled throughout her extraordinary career. Bates plays attorney, judge, feminist, and political activist Dorothy Kenyon .

Even if slightly cheesy and not groundbreaking or revolutionary, Mimi Leder's inspirational film makes for a fascinating and not-so-subtle biopic about the timeless wrestle to finally be heard, reflecting on gender roles and inequalities, and shedding light on the incredible doings of a brave woman. On the Basis of Sex is well-acted, featuring great performances from those involved , including Bates, who plays a supporting yet meaningful character in this inspiring story.

12 'Midnight in Paris' (2011)

Appeared as gertrude stein.

Also directed by the controversial filmmaker mentioned above, the fantasy comedy Midnight in Paris is an unconventional film of its genre following a nostalgic screenwriter ( Owen Wilson ) who experiences a strange phenomenon where he is transported back to the 1920s every day at midnight. Bates plays a minor role as the legendary art critic Gertrude Stein .

It is quite understandable if some audience members prefer to draw away from Allen’s work. However, Midnight in Paris is a whimsical love letter to the city of love that results in an entertaining and charming viewing, featuring some well-known faces in the industry, including Rachel McAdams , Bates, and Tom Hiddleston . Midnight in Paris is a great tribute to Paris and an homage to the creative process , featuring an enchanting fantasy tale in service of a good, old-fashioned story about creativity and the power of the written word.

Midnight in Paris

11 'come back to the 5 & dime, jimmy dean, jimmy dean' (1982), appeared as stella mae.

In this incredibly entertaining 20th-century comedy-drama movie directed by Robert Altman , a group of passionate fans gather to reconnect on the 20th anniversary of James Dean 's passing. The film stars an ensemble of performers, including Cher and Sandy Dennis , with Bates playing Stella Mae, one of the Disciples of James Dean on the anniversary of his passing.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is perhaps not as long as its title, but it is assuredly as original and creative. Featuring fantastic performances from those involved and exceptional dialogue to match, Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is an often-forgotten gem that makes for a fantastical, moving, and smart movie experience .

10 'At Play in the Fields of the Lord' (1991)

Appeared as hazel quarrier.

Directed by Héctor Babenco , the epic adventure film At Play in the Fields of the Lord is a dramatic adventure film that takes place in the 1960s. The narrative follows Martin Quarrier ( Aidan Quinn ), a missionary, as he travels to Brazil with his wife Hazel (Bates) and their son Billy ( Niilo Kivirinta ) to convert the Niaruna people.

A Greek tragedy located in the Amazon, At Play in the Fields of the Lord provides food for thought about cultural conflict and power, as well as its consequences . Bates is reliably great in the film and often makes up for some of its weaker elements and stumbles. Still, this believably accurate story sends out an interesting message about faith and beliefs. Its screenplay is adapted from the 1965 novel of the same name by American author Peter Matthiessen .

Rent on Apple TV

9 'Primary Colors' (1998)

Appeared as libby holden.

In Mike Nichols' smart political comedy-drama Primary Colors , Jack Stanton ( John Travolta ) is a presidential candidate whose campaign is observed by a young man named Henry Burton ( Adrian Lester ). However, Stanton's biggest challenge is perhaps facing the challenge of addressing a sex scandal that arises during the election. Bates plays troubleshooter Libby Holden, a key figure in handling the situation.

Loosely based on Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, Primary Colors provides viewers with an outlook on the nature and shadow sides of contemporary American politics . Despite being a satire, Nichols' 1998 remarkably well-acted manages to be moving at times. Bates is in top shape as the unbalanced Holden, delivering a performance that earned her a second Oscar nomination in 1999. Bates is one of the film's strongest assets, with the actress giving one of her most well-known performances.

Watch on Tubi

8 'Titanic' (1997)

Appeared as margaret "molly" brown.

A timeless classic blockbuster, James Cameron 's iconic love story based on the recounts of the sinking of the titular ship incorporates both historical and fictionalized elements. It mostly centers on a seventeen-year-old aristocrat ( Kate Winslet ) who falls in love with a good-hearted but poor artist ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) aboard the luxurious, doomed cruise. Bates as the American socialite and philanthropist Molly Brown .

A commercial and critical success featuring great acting performances, Titanic remains one of the best epic movies in cinema and one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Titanic belongs entirely to DiCaprio and especially Winslet, but Bates is a memorable part of the action — her inspired, feisty take on Molly Brown is unforgettable, fierce, and among the most remarkable aspects of Titanic .

7 'Richard Jewell' (2019)

Appeared as barbara "bobi" jewell.

One of Bates' most critically acclaimed features of recent times is Richard Jewell . The film follows the real story of Richard Jewell (played by Paul Walter Hauser ), a security guard who discovered a backpack full of explosives at the Atlanta Summer Olympics of 1996 and raised the alarm before the bomb exploded. Bates plays Richard's concerned mother, Bobi.

With amazing direction by Clint Eastwood , this incredibly acted tale about investigations gone wrong makes for an incredibly powerful, humane, and sincere viewing experience. Richard Jewell features one of Bates' strongest roles, with the actress stealing the spotlight whenever she steps on the screen . She received her fourth and most recent Oscar nomination for her work in the film, a well-deserved acknowledgment of her efforts.

Richard Jewell

6 'revolutionary road' (2008), appeared as helen givings.

Bates' second film with DiCaprio and Winslet is Sam Mendes ' Revolutionary Road . Based on the eponymous novel, the film follows Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple residing in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s, as they face challenges in reconciling their issues while simultaneously raising their two children. The iconic actress masterfully plays Helen Giving, a woman who helps the couple buy their home at 115 Revolutionary Road.

Tackling marriage, forgiveness, and loneliness, this intelligent and touching flick features top-notch writing and equally great acting. Revolutionary Road is a visceral, relentless deconstruction of marriage , with DiCaprio and Winslet delivering career-best performances. Bates' aloof portrayal of Helen is the perfect contrast to the protagonists' plight; she represents the trap of the American dream, which Frank and April so desperately want to avoid.

Revolutionary Road

5 'about schmidt' (2002), appeared as roberta hertzel.

Released to critical and commercial success, this humorous, must-see character study by Alexander Payne stars three-time Oscar winner Jack Nicholson as the lead character, Warren Schmidt. After leading a safe and predictable life, Warren is forced to reflect on his marriage, his existence, and his relationship with his estranged daughter.

A masterclass in acting, About Schmidt flawlessly blends comedy and drama and features not only one of Nicholson's best roles to date but also offers audiences a fantastic performance by the versatile Bates, who plays the aging but free-spirited Roberta Hertzel. Her performance is electrifying and instantly noteworthy, earning her a third Oscar nomination. Bates provides About Schmidt with an instant jolt of energy that's sorely missed once she's gone .

About Schmidt

4 'are you there god it's me, margaret.' (2023), appeared as sylvia simon.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is one of 2023's brightest surprises in the genre, ranking high among the best comedies of the year. The film follows an 11-year-old girl's ( Abby Ryder Fortson ) journey after her family relocates from the city to the suburbs. This forces her to adjust to new friendships, emotions, and the onset of puberty. Bates plays Grandma Sylvia, who loves her granddaughter but intrudes far too much in her upbringing.

An incredible coming-of-age period piece , this excellent Kelly Fremon Craig adaptation of Judy Blume's novel of the same name is equal amounts innocent, sweet, and wholesome. Furthermore, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret is a powerful examination of faith, religion, and family — it is a fun and moving story, with three-dimensional characters, that remains true and relevant to today's audiences of all ages.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Watch on Starz

3 'Fried Green Tomatoes' (1991)

Appeared as evelyn couch.

Jon Avnet 's two-time Oscar-nominated (Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Screenplay) Fried Green Tomatoes centers on a discontented housewife (Bates) who becomes friends with a charming elderly woman ( Jessica Tandy ) in a nursing home. The old lady shares fascinating stories of people she knew, which captivates Evelyn's attention.

Celebrating friendship and human connection, this 1991 feature counts on memorable powerhouse performances by both leads. Bates is stellar in Fried Green Tomatoes , a film that cemented her as a leading lady and showcased a lighter side to her after her Oscar-winning turn in Misery . The movie is an enjoyable, lovable, and engaging narrative that could only result in a memorable and touching sisterhood tale that is the perfect pick for anyone looking to watch a female-centric flick .

Fried Green Tomatoes

2 'dolores claiborne' (1995), appeared as dolores claiborne.

Dolores Claiborne is a gripping and underrated psychological thriller from the 90s based on Stephen King's eponymous novel. The premise follows a big-city reporter who visits a small town where her mother has been detained for the murder of an old woman for whom she served as a housekeeper.

Definitely one of the actress' most intriguing roles and best performances, Dolores Claiborne is a riveting character study that allows Bates to flex her acting chops . This Taylor Hackford feature is melancholic and intense, providing audiences with a thrilling time throughout its entirety. Bates is outstanding in the role, effortlessly commanding the film and supporting the story almost single-handedly. It's no surprise Dolores Claiborne is Bates' favorite movie of hers .

1 'Misery' (1990)

Appeared as annie wilkes.

The film that brought the star to the spotlight, Misery , was the first Stephen King adaptation that Bates partook in. This frightening kidnapping flick is among the best in the genre because it offers an unconventional narrative: it centers on a famous author ( James Caan ) who realizes that the treatment he is receiving after being saved from a car accident is a nightmarish tale of confinement and abuse.

Incredibly eerie, haunting, and captivating, this classic drama thriller by Rob Reiner remains the project that stands out most in Bates' career , even after all these years. She delivers a superb performance, effortlessly blending near-childlike innocence with unforgiving cruelty. Bates' mercurial, unsettling performance is among the all-time best, with Annie Wilkes often ranking among cinema's greatest villains. To anyone looking for Kathy Bates' best movies — this is it.

NEXT: Supporting Actors Who Shined In a Lead Role

10 Best Buddy Western Movies, Ranked

Westerns have reigned supreme as one of the most popular film genres and, ever since the Silent Era, they have remained a beloved favorite among film fanatics. The classic genre was initially established by pioneer filmmakers such as John Ford , Howard Hawks , and John Sturges. Later, the genre evolved and covered new territory thanks to notable names including Mel Brooks and Quentin Tarantino . Between the 1930s and 1960s, movies known as "buddy films" became prominent in cinema and eventually found their way into the Western genre with classics like Rio Bravo and Buck and the Preacher .

The buddy Western typically depicts the journey of two unlikely individuals, friends who work towards a common goal, whether that be saving a town from a ruthless outlaw or defeating a common enemy. Even though this element is common in most Western films, a handful qualify as full-blown buddy Westerns, such as Hell or High Water and For a Few Dollars More. From Netflix's The Highwaymen to the iconic classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , these are the 10 best buddy Western movies, ranked.

'The Highwaymen' (2019)

Directed by john lee hancock.

Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson co-star in the Netflix original film, The Highwaymen , as former Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer, and Maney Gault, who come out of retirement to help track down notorious outlaws, Clyde Burrow and Bonnie Parker. While both seasoned rangers are reluctant to assist with the case, they know that if they don't, there's no telling how much more bloodshed Burrow and Parker will leave behind.

The Highwaymen is a criminal Western based on the true story of Hamer and Gault, who successfully ended Burrow and Parker's crime spree, killing the infamous couple in Louisiana in 1934. Costner and Harrelson have the perfect balance of wit and humor that make them an exceptional duo, providing a rare perspective into the authorities' efforts to find one of the country's most famous outlaws . Some have criticized the plot for lagging in what they expected to be an entertaining journey, but Costner and Harrelson's performances make up for the shortcomings.

The Highwaymen

Release Date March 15, 2019

Director John Lee Hancock

Cast Kathy Bates, Kim Dickens, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Costner, W. Earl Brown, John Carroll Lynch

Runtime 132

Genres Drama

Watch on Netflix

"Appaloosa" (2008)

Directed by ed harris.

In the small mining town of Appaloosa, New Mexico, a merciless rancher, Randall Bragg ( Jeremy Irons ), kills the town's marshal and, with his gang of outlaws, terrorize the town's citizens through fear and violence. In a last-ditch effort, the locals hire a lawman, Vigil Cole ( Ed Harris ), and his deputy, Everett Hitch ( Viggo Mortenson ) to help stop Bragg and re-establish law and order in their community.

The underrated Western thriller , Appaloosa , features riveting performances by both Harris and Mortenson as well as Irons, who delivers a noteworthy Western villain. The film marks Harris' second directorial credit and, while some have pointed out that the plot drags at certain points, this single downside is redeemed by Harris' excellent direction and the unexpected twists and revelations within an array of unique characters, making Appaloosa a hidden gem of a buddy Western .

Release Date September 19, 2008

Director Ed Harris

Cast James Tarwater, Luce Rains, Robert Jauregui, Jeremy Irons, Timothy V. Murphy, Boyd Kestner

Runtime 114

Genres Drama, Crime, Documentary, Western

Watch on Max

"Buck and the Preacher" (1972)

Directed by sidney poitier.

Sidney Poitier directs and stars in Buck and the Preacher as a soldier turned guide, Buck, who helps former slaves find refuge within settlements in the West. When a con artist known as the Preacher, played by Harry Belafonte , joins Buck and his group, the two men constantly clash with one another, but after learning a gang of bounty hunters are after them to bring the freed slaves back to Louisiana, the men put aside their differences and work together to save the weary travelers.

The lesser-known buddy Western, Buck and the Preacher , takes place shortly after the end of the Civil War and depicts a rather rare story that sheds light on the aftermath of the war for both those who fought and survived the brutal event. The film marked Poitier's first directorial credit and earned immense praise for his artistic direction. Initially, the movie earned mixed reviews from critics, but Buck and the Preacher is a vital film that brings a fresh take on the traditional tropes of the classic Western and guarantees to be an entertaining buddy Western carried by two of Hollywood's biggest stars .

Buck And The Preacher (1972)

Release Date April 28, 1972

Director Sidney Poitier

Cast James McEachin, Nita Talbot, Denny Miller, Cameron Mitchell, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte

Runtime 102 Minutes

Genres Drama, Adventure, Western

Rent on Amazon

"The Sisters Brothers" (2018)

Directed by jacques audiard.

Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Rielly star in The Sisters Brothers , as brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are deadly assassins traveling through the Northwest in search of two men ( Jake Gyllenhaal , Riz Ahmed ) who have banded together in a search for gold. Along the way, Eli and Charlie must survive a series of obstacles, including the unpredictable wilderness and a dangerous brothel in the small town of Mayfield, which ultimately puts their family bond to the test.

Phoenix and Rielly are an unlikely duo who absolutely shine in the buddy Western, The Sisters Brothers , which is based on the novel by the same name written by Patrick deWitt . Despite being a flop at the box office, The Sisters Brothers still earned positive reviews for its overall performances, noting Phoenix and Rielly as being well-matched leading men, as well as director, Jacques Audiard 's bold direction. Even though it wasn't a commercial success, The Sisters Brothers is a surprisingly humorous Western with just the right amount of drama to earn a spot on the list of best buddy Westerns .

The Sisters Brothers

Release Date September 19, 2018

Director Jacques Audiard

Cast Graham Root, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Riz Ahmed, Allison Tolman

Runtime 121

Genres Western

Watch on Tubi

"Hell or High Water" (2016)

Directed by david mackenzie.

In the neo-Western, Hell or High Water , Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as brothers, Toby, a divorced father trying to build a better life for his son, and Tanner, an ex-convict who is attempting to turn over a new leaf. When their family's ranch is at risk of being foreclosed on, the brothers plan a series of heists against the bank, threatening to take their home and quickly have two Texas Rangers ( Jeff Bridges , Gil Birmingham ) hot on their trail.

Written by Yellowstone creator, Taylor Sheridan , Hell or High Water is a modern buddy Western riddled with outstanding performances and went on to earn four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Overall, the movie earned positive reviews and was credited for essentially revitalizing the Western genre with a carefully crafted story and well-developed characters. While Hell or High Water might not feature the usual cowboys and gunslingers, its reformulated take on the classic genre appeals to a modern audience, which qualifies it as a top-notch buddy Western .

Hell or High Water

Release Date August 12, 2016

Director David Mackenzie

Cast Chris Pine, Kevin Rankin, Dale Dickey, Katy Mixon, Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster

Runtime 102 minutes

Genres Thriller, Crime, Western

"Blazing Saddles" (1974)

Directed by mel brooks.

During the construction of a new railway, an attorney general, Hedley Lamarr ( Harvey Korman ), realizes the town of Rock Ridge is blocking the route and, in an effort to run the people out of town, he appoints an African American railroad worker, Bart ( Clevon Little ), as their new sheriff. When Bart arrives, the townspeople are not pleased, but after Lamarr sends a group of bandits to help move the process along, they turn to their new sheriff and a sharpshooter, Jim the Waco Kid ( Gene Wilder ), to protect them and their home.

Mel Brooks' comedy Western, Blazing Saddles , is a laugh-out-loud buddy Western that features a cast of comedy legends, including Madeline Kahn , Slim Pickens , and Dom DeLuise . Little and Wilder effortlessly play off each other and are easily the funniest pair of pals in any Western film. The film contains an endless amount of gags and jokes that poke fun at everyone and just when audiences think they have a chance to take a breath, Brooks throws another bag of laughs that sends the picture off into unexpected places (notably through the Warner Bros. lot). With the film's never-ending humor and Little and Wilder's unforgettable performances, Blazing Saddles is hands down one of the best buddy Westerns of all time .

Blazing Saddles

Release Date February 7, 1974

Director Mel Brooks

Cast Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks

Genres Comedy, Western

"Rio Bravo" (1959)

Directed by howard hawks.

After an infamous gunslinger, Joe Burdette ( Claude Akins), shoots and kills a man in a saloon, he's locked up by the town's sheriff, John T. Chance ( John Wayne), who is aided by the town's rummy, Dude ( Dean Martin ). When word of Burdette's arrest reaches his brother, Nathan ( John Russell ), he quickly arrives with a pose and threatens to break his brother out of jail at any cost. While others fear Nathan's retaliation, Chance stands his ground and enlists help from Dude, his friend, Stumpy ( Walter Brennan ), and a young cowboy ( Ricky Nelson ).

In Howard Hawks' classic Western film, Rio Bravo , there might be several buddies working towards a common goal, but Wayne and Martin's characters are the essential focus of the buddy film element. Between their completely opposite personalities and the ability to help one another in their own way is what makes Rio Bravo a crucial buddy Western film . Considering Rio Bravo is what's known as a hang-out movie, it adds even more depth to the friendships and the importance each of them has to one another.

Release Date April 4, 1959

Director Howard Hawks

Cast Walter Brennan, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin, John Wayne

Rating Passed

Runtime 141 Minutes

Genres Drama, Western

'Django Unchained' (2012)

Directed by quentin tarantino.

In Quentin Tarantino's epic neo-Western, Django Unchained , a German bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz ( Christoph Waltz ) teams up with an enslaved man, Django ( Jamie Foxx ) and together they help capture wanted outlaws who have hefty prices on their heads. Eventually, King offers to help Django rescue his wife ( Kerry Washington ), who is on a plantation known as Candyland, which is owned by one of the best Western villains, the wealthy and sadistic Southerner, Clavin Candie ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) .

King and Django are a rare and eccentric duo who come from completely different worlds but still have the same values. While most buddy films center on one common goal, Django Unchained redefines the buddy Western film by presenting one's moral obligation to help his newfound friend, which inevitably brings the duo closer together. With intense action scenes in classic Tarantino style and an utmost satisfying but bittersweet finale, Django Unchained is one of the absolute best modern buddy Western films .

Django Unchained

Release Date December 25, 2012

Director Quentin Tarantino

Cast Jonah Hill, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz

Runtime 165

Main Genre Western

Watch on Hulu

'For A Few Dollars More' (1965)

Directed by sergio leone.

Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef star in Sergio Leone 's infamous Western, For a Few Dollars More , as bounty hunters, Manco and Colonel Douglas Mortimer, who decide to work together and capture a dangerous wanted outlaw, El Indio ( Gian Maria Volonté ) and his gang of cutthroat criminals. As Manco infiltrates El Indio's gang, Mortimer follows close behind and both wait for the opportune moment to make their sudden, deadly move against them.

Initially, audiences are under the impression that money is the common endgame for both Eastwood and Van Cleef's characters, but in a surprising twist, it's revealed that Mortimer has a personal vendetta against El Indio, adding an emotional element to this otherwise action-packed buddy Western. Despite having the same profession, Eastwood and Van Cleef are unusually different, which brings an unpredictable notion to their partnership, inciting the consistent question of whether one will betray the other. Their values eventually align and make them an unlikely but effective duo, making For a Few Dollars More one of the best classic buddy Western films .

For a Few Dollars More

Release Date May 10, 1965

Director Sergio Leone

Cast Klaus Kinski, Luigi Pistilli, Mara Krupp, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonte, Clint Eastwood

'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' (1969)

Directed by george roy hill.

In the Old West, outlaws, Butch Cassidy ( Paul Newman ) and Henry Longabaugh A.K.A. the Sundance Kid ( Robert Redford ) commit a string of train robberies which results in a posse of U.S. lawmen pursuing them. As the duo make their escape and head to Bolivia, they continue to survive on their criminal instincts, but their luck eventually runs out once Bolivian authorities notify the posse of their whereabouts.

Hollywood legends, Paul Newman and Robert Redford star in the defiant buddy Western film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid . Unlike most buddy Westerns, the finale depicts the outlaws going out in a blaze of gunfire, leading audiences to believe they met their end in an epic shootout, refusing to be taken alive. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid earned several Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, winning four, most notably for the title song, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head . The film is considered to be one of the top buddy films of the 1960s and while most have typical happy endings, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has the rare quality that sets it apart from others, making it the best buddy Western film .

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Release Date September 24, 1969

Director George Roy Hill

Cast Jeff Corey, Henry Jones, Strother Martin, Katharine Ross, Robert Redford, Paul Newman

Runtime 110 minutes

Genres Biopic, Crime, Western

KEEP READING: The 10 Best Gunslinger Westerns, Ranked

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Film Review: The Highwaymen (2019)

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COMMENTS

The Highwaymen movie review & film summary (2019)
The sense that "The Highwaymen" is meant as a "corrective" to Penn's film is patently ludicrous and requires one to willfully misread Penn's intentions with that work. And it's that sense of self-importance that weighs heavily enough on "The Highwaymen" that it sinks under that pressure to be the "real story" to which we ...
The Highwaymen
Apr 2, 2019 Full Review Keith Garlington Keith & the Movies I get the inevitable complaints of "too slow" and "not enough action". Yet I found myself loving it - the slow burn, the ...
'The Highwaymen' Review: Grumpy Old Men on the Trail of Glamorous
The ex-Rangers, reclassified as highway patrolmen for their new mission, prefer to rely on horse sense and cowboy folk wisdom. "Outlaws and mustangs always come home," says Frank Hamer (Kevin ...
The Highwaymen review
Sun 10 Mar 2019 21.30 EDT Last modified on Tue 26 Mar 2019 06.28 EDT Share I t was French New Wave great Jean-Luc Godard who memorably mused that in order to criticize a movie, you must make ...
The Highwaymen (2019)
We all saw the movie Bonnie and Clyde (1967) directed by Arthur Penn.In France, we all heard the eponymous song (Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg, 1968).The Highwaymen is a mirror version with two retired Rangers in pursuit of the infamous outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, considered as Robin Hood and his beloved wife by the plebs.A dead or alive hunt, in the 30's.
Netflix's The Highwaymen: Movie Review
When we do catch a glimpse of the doomed, gun-crazy lovers, we almost never see their faces; they're shot from a distance, elusive and ghostly. Even Bonnie's limp feels less like a sign of ...
'The Highwaymen' Review
SXSW Film Review: 'The Highwaymen'. Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson are well-matched as the men who caught Bonnie and Clyde in this revisionist version of the gangster couple's mythos ...
The Highwaymen (2019)
The Highwaymen: Directed by John Lee Hancock. With Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson, Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch. The untold true story of the legendary detectives who brought down Bonnie and Clyde.
The Highwaymen
Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 17, 2019 Melissa Hannon Horror Geek Life The Highwaymen is a well-done period piece and stands out as an original Bonnie and Clyde themed tale.
'The Highwaymen': Film Review
'The Highwaymen': Film Review | SXSW 2019. John Lee Hancock tells the other side of the Bonnie & Clyde saga in 'The Highwaymen,' a detective story starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.
The Highwaymen review Costner and Harrelson team up to catch Bonnie and
Costner and Harrelson have an easy, believable rapport. You like spending time in their company — even if they don't much enjoy each other's. And the main joy of the film is watching them ...
The Highwaymen (film)
The Highwaymen is a 2019 American period crime thriller film directed by John Lee Hancock and written by John Fusco.The film stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, two former Texas Rangers who attempt to track down and apprehend notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde in the 1930s. Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, Kim Dickens, Thomas Mann and William Sadler also star.
'The Highwaymen' Review: Kevin Costner & Woody ...
SXSW: In the sturdy Netflix drama, this masculine Western duo were born to be together as much as the criminals in their crosshairs. The legacy of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow has been so tied ...
The Highwaymen
Movie Review. Frank Hamer and Maney Gault are, frankly, way past their sell-by dates. They're both gray-and-grizzled former Texas Rangers who were partners and pretty famous back in the days when there were Texas Rangers. But that was a long time ago as far as current Texas Governor Ma Ferguson is concerned. I mean, it's 1934!
The Highwaymen Is a Pleasant Throwback of a Movie
Whichever term you prefer, feel free to attach it to the Netflix movie The Highwaymen, currently enjoying a small theatrical run and, as of Friday, streaming on the service. A tale of hard men ...
The Highwaymen Movie Review
THE HIGHWAYMEN, a movie based on actual events, pays tribute to Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson), the two aging Texas Rangers who were called upon to bring their skills and resourcefulness to the manhunt for the legendary Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.The infamous couple had evaded capture time and again. More than a thousand law enforcement officers, including ...
The Highwaymen (2019) Movie Reviews
The Highwaymen does touch on the couple's celebrity status within the eyes of the general public, but still takes a generally black-and-white approach to the core conflict. Hamer and Gault are definitely the "good guys" here, trying to bring down vicious cop killers. In some ways, this does work for the purposes of the movie (cutaways to some ...
The Highwaymen
The outlaws made headlines. The lawmen made history. The Highwaymen follows the untold true story of the legendary detectives who brought down Bonnie and Clyde. When the full force of the FBI and the latest forensic technology aren't enough to capture the nation's most notorious criminals, two former Texas Rangers (Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson) must rely on their gut instincts and old ...
'The Highwaymen' Review: Bonnie and Clyde Who?
Hilary B Gayle/Netflix. In 1934, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker drove into an ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They had come there with the intent of laying low while visiting fellow gang ...
Movie Review
The Highwaymen, 2019. Directed by John Lee Hancock. Starring Woody Harrelson, Kevin Costner, Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, Kim Dickens, Thomas Mann, W. Earl Brown, Emily Brobst, and Edward ...
REVIEW: "The Highwaymen"
REVIEW: "The Highwaymen" ... This entry was posted in Movie Reviews - H and tagged Bonnie and Clyde, Frank Hamer, John Carroll Lynch, Kathy Bates, kevin costner, The Highwaymen review, woody harrelson. ... Henry Chamberlain says: April 10, 2019 at 6:57 pm This is such a winner. Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson are a joy to view on the screen.
Film Review
1.9K. In a time where the revisionist Western (and even the revisionist-revisionist Western) are typical the only stories of the West getting the green light, The Highwaymen goes in the opposite direction, preferring a classical approach full of full-body heroes and villains. Brooding but at times boring, Netflix's The Highwaymen switches the script on the story of America's most cinematic ...
The Highwaymen (2019) Movie Review
#TheHighwaymen sure got the SXSW crowd excited; a southern story about a Texan legend or two, with Austin and Texas featured prominently and directed by home...
15 Best Kathy Bates Movies, Ranked
The best Kathy Bates movies are gripping, layered, and poignant, largely thanks to the large, meaningful role she plays. 15 'The Highwaymen' (2019)
10 Best Buddy Western Movies, Ranked
'The Highwaymen' (2019) ... Overall, the movie earned positive reviews and was credited for essentially revitalizing the Western genre with a carefully crafted story and well-developed characters.

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SXSW Film Review: ‘The Highwaymen’

Reviewed at SXSW Film Festival (Headliners), March 10, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 132 MIN.

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