"The Highwaymen": review

Woody Harrelson as Maney Gault; Kevin Costner as Frank Hamer

Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson star in 2019's "The Highwaymen," directed by John Lee Hancock. You might not know of the Highwaymen, but you do know at least the outlines of the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Darrow, a.k.a. Bonnie and Clyde. "The Highwaymen" is the story of the principal guys who caught and killed the wayward couple—Frank "Pancho" Hamer (Costner) and Maney Gault (Harrelson). The movie doubtless takes some historical liberties, but it does affirm that, in the end, the killing of Bonnie and Clyde was a team effort requiring the coordination of way more than just two men.

It is 1934. Prohibition ended the previous year. Bonnie and Clyde are two years into their spree. As the film opens, the two break some people out of Eastham Prison Farm. We see Bonnie walking with a limp. The film is coy about revealing Bonnie and Clyde's faces, which aren't clearly seen until right before the end. For most of the film, Bonnie and Clyde are spoken about but only rarely seen; this reinforces the perspective of the characters we're following: Hamer and Gault, two former Texas Rangers (the Rangers had been disbanded by then-Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson in 1933) who are tasked with tracking down Bonnie and Clyde after the couple had already killed a number of police officers and robbed several banks over the course of two years. Governor "Ma" Ferguson (Kathy Bates) is hesitant about engaging Hamer; worrying over her public image, she tells her underlings to keep Hamer on a short leash. As you might imagine, this doesn't work out very well.

Hamer recruits fellow former Texas Ranger Maney Gault, who is currently jobless, depressed, and drinking. Gault is happy to get the work, and much of the movie is about the now-playful, now-serious interaction between these two as they use their old-school methods to track the criminals down. In 1934, J. Edgar Hoover heads up the FBI, and wiretapping has just become a thing. CSI-related methods and rules we now think of as commonplace—like not contaminating a crime scene—are only now being put into place, making Hamer and Gault feel like fish out of water. But their old-style methods of detective work prove effective, especially in how Hamer is able to profile Bonnie and Clyde, getting inside their heads to figure out their next move.

If you remember the story of Bonnie and Clyde, you know how all of this is going to end, so for the layman viewer, there are few questions as to how the plot will unfold. Ultimately, Bonnie and Clyde have to end up dead inside their car, riddled with hundreds of bullets pumped into them from all angles.  (When the scene finally plays out in this movie, it's strongly reminiscent of 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde" starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.) That said, the movie was smart enough to fool me into thinking one crucial character was going to die, but that character made it to the end of the movie alive and kicking. One thing I really didn't expect, however, was how anticlimactic the end of Bonnie and Clyde would be. After all the buildup and the tension, killing Bonnie and Clyde proved easy. The hard part was maneuvering the chess pieces into the right position. I suspect that "The Highwaymen" is more about the buildup than about the payoff, more about Hamer and Gault as two dinosaurs in a modernizing world—two Dirty Harrys before Dirty Harry. And Hamer and Gault have the distinction, unlike Dirty Harry, of being real.

Woody Harrelson plays Gault as a constant joker. Gault offers most of the film's comic relief, but he's also deadly serious when it's time to be serious. Costner's Hamer, gruff-voiced and world-weary, is the straight man in this duo, and while he's no longer the crack shot he used to be, his intuitions remain spot-on. There were times, though, while watching Harrelson's performance, that I was transported to Harrelson's work about five years back in Season 1 of "True Detective." Still, Costner and Harrelson are a good match; they play well off each other, and their back-and-forth is rather amusing. It was, however, surprising and discomfiting to see Costner so old, with a gut hanging out. I'm used to remembering him as an athletic actor in films like "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," "The Bodyguard," and "The Guardian." In "The Highwaymen," there's a moment where Hamer tries to run after a kid, but the kid outruns him and jumps over a wooden fence that Hamer just can't get over.

Critics gave "The Highwaymen" mixed reviews, and I can see why. The film's biggest sin is that it's way too predictable and way too expository. The film tends to telegraph its intentions, which leaves little room for suspense, and the plot does occasionally feel a bit draggy as a result. The idea of the old, archaic cop who knows better than the young, tech-savvy rookies is a weatherbeaten trope in movies. The scenario in which one character breaks away and gets in trouble while attempting to do something on his own is another such trope. The older cop who tries to yell some sense into a younger cop is also a hoary cliché in a movie filled with hoary clichés. So I can see why a lot of critics disliked the film.

But despite the film's obvious flaws and easily foreseeable trajectory, I enjoyed what the movie did well: it allowed us to spend a couple of hours in the company of two old men who are still capable of solving problems, all while they bicker with each other like some old couple who no longer interact in any other way. And while Bonnie and Clyde are practically the MacGuffin driving the story of "The Highwaymen" forward, what really registers is the friendship of these two gents—Hamer and Gault. 

The film does make some nods to actual history: Bonnie and Clyde did indeed murder quite a few police officers and rob some banks; Bonnie did, in fact, write poems—including a prophetic poem titled "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde," which ends thus:

Some day they'll go down together;
And they'll bury them side by side;
To few it'll be grief
To the law a relief
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.

The movie is also true to life about how the couple had been admired by many regular Americans, who saw Bonnie and Clyde as fighting against The Man, robbing the rich to give to the poor. The movie depicts the crowd that surrounded the couple's bullet-riddled car as it was slowly towed into town with the corpses still in it: people reached into the car and grabbed this or that item as grisly souvenirs. With infamy come the jackals.

I came away thinking "The Highwaymen" wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad, either. One thing it had going for it was beautiful cinematography. It's actually a fairly relaxing watch if you're looking for something to do on a quiet night, and it comes with my earnest recommendation.

Final note: the Texas Rangers have been disbanded a few times throughout their history, and after being disbanded again in 1933, they were reestablished soon after, and it is now illegal to disband them ever again.