Review: Bonnie and Clyde

Set in the 1930s, bored waitress Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) hooks up with recently paroled criminal Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) as the lovebird duo pull off a series of heists. It’s fun for a while, but then the reality – and spectre of death – sets in. Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons play Clyde’s brother Buck and his hysterical wife, whilst Michael J. Pollard plays gnome-like getaway driver C.W. Moss.

 

A model of its type, this 1967 telling of the famed bank robbing couple from director Arthur Penn (“The Left-Handed Gun”, “Little Big Man”) fires on all cylinders. Stunningly shot by Burnett Guffey (“From Here to Eternity”, “The Birdman of Alcatraz”, “King Rat”), wonderfully edited and directed, and the cast is mostly outstanding, too. Faye Dunaway became a bit of a style icon here as Bonnie Parker, and excels as the clearly bored and frustrated young woman. It’s the role – and the performance – that really made her a star. Although I think Bruce Dern or Jon Voight would’ve been better, Warren Beatty has his best-ever showing as Clyde Barrow, a somewhat charming but impotent criminal just out of prison. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed: ‘We rob banks!’ he proudly and boldly states at one point. What an idiot, and nowhere near as brave as he tries to present himself as, and Beatty sells the character’s nervousness and his insecurities. Whether the film’s portrayal of these characters closely jives with history, I cannot say but they’re fascinating film characters nonetheless. Although the crime spree is successful for a while, it’s still a doomed union from the initially fun first scene, one of the weirder ‘meet cute’ scenes you’ll ever see. They even make out after their first bank robbery. They’re a fascinatingly twisted central pairing in a great story well-told by screenwriters David Newman (“Superman”) and Robert Benton (writer-director of the likes of “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Places in the Heart”). You can’t help but feel for the central couple, who were young enough and enterprising enough that life could’ve turned out differently – and longer – for them had they made different choices.

 

There’s lots of great little moments, like brothers Clyde and Buck re-uniting and whooping it up…and then not being sure what to say to one another. I also love the bit where Buck and Clyde are yukking it up in one car, whilst Bonnie and Buck’s wife (Estelle Parsons) are completely silent in the other. The fun has started to wear off for poor Bonnie by that point. It gets even worse when she later finds out the occupation of a new acquaintance: Undertaker. The laughter and frivolity of the rest of that scene immediately stop and Bonnie reverts back to a scared little mama’s girl. I really like the film’s portrayal of the Depression-era Midwestern locals the couple encounter. They talk slow and seem a bit that way too. Tired, worn-out perhaps. I also like that the film has a sense of humour, the best example being the hilarious work by a constantly hysterical (in more than one sense) Estelle Parsons, who has a great bit where there’s a shootout and she immediately starts screaming and holding a meat cleaver for whatever reason. It’s a very big and deliberately annoying performance and Parsons commits to it 100%. More briefly we have a great comic cameo by an extremely anxious Gene Wilder as an unwanted new acquaintance of the gang. It’s probably one of the funniest cameos in a non-comedy you’ll ever see. A young Gene Hackman is lively fun as Clyde’s loyal brother, and Michael J. Pollard is the slowest of the slow as their peculiar getaway driver. A one-of-a-kind actor in pretty much his one standout film role. Western veterans Dub Taylor and Denver Pyle do terrific character work as Pollard’s shifty father and an embarrassed Texas Ranger, respectively. The film was kind of a landmark for on-screen violence, and it’s not just in the tragic finale (the opening and final scenes are the film’s best, perfect bookends). All siege scenes in movies owe everything to two films, “Rio Bravo” and this film. It’s great, violent stuff, a real shock and stark contrast to the fun of the first act. Shit gets real and bullets really start flying. Even poor Buck is too busy bleeding to be a jovial good ‘ol boy anymore. It’s not quite “The Wild Bunch”, but there’s more blood and violence here than in most other mainstream films of the period.

 

If not a classic film, certainly a near-classic and a classic of its type. Well-acted, well-directed, well-edited, well-shot, and well worth your time.

 

Rating: B+