The Highwaymen Review - 9/10

On March 10th, of this year The Highwaymen released on Netflix. Starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson the movie tells the story of how two former Texas Rangers tracked down the infamous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and put an end to their murderous rampage.

When The Highwaymen first dropped I thought it looked interesting and added it to my watch list but just couldn't seem to get around to watching it. It's been a busy month and with a run time of over two hours I just had a hard time finally sitting down to watch it until tonight. In between other things I decided to watch the first few minutes of the film and just see if it looked promising. Fifteen minutes in I was already blocking out the evening to finally watch the film through. The Highwaymen opens on a dramatic prison break where the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, viewed either only from a distance or without revealing their faces, spring three of their gang members from a work gang. Following the prison break, which left one prison guard dead and another wounded, the Texas Governor Miriam Amanda Wallace "Ma" Ferguson meets with her staff to discuss the situation. Marshall Lee Simons, played by John Carroll Lynch, suggests that the governor bring a pair of Texas Rangers out of retirement to hunt down the outlaws given that two years and a thousand law enforcement officers had been unable to stop the murderers. Ma Ferguson had abolished the Texas Rangers as part of sweeping law enforcement reforms and was resistant to the idea but eventually caves, allowing Lee Simons to seek out retired ranger Captain Frank Hamer. Retired and happily married the former Texas Ranger is reluctant to take up a gun and go on the hunt once more. Ultimately Hamer does decide to take on the job and goes to enlist a former partner and friend Maney Gault and the film and story are off and running at that point.

For the next hour and a half the two rangers put their skills tracking outlaws to work, gathering clues the more modern law enforcement agencies overlook, tracking their quarry's movements and figuring out where they are going to ground. Throughout this process the characters of Hamer and Gault slowly emerge as well as the characters of their targets, the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde.

Ultimately there are no real gun battles, no fist fights through enclosed spaces, no dramatic explosions or daring stunts, rather The Highwaymen is classic example of a riveting crime drama where the viewer is invited to follow the lawmen on the winding path of catching the criminals. In that way so much of the glitter and glam of modern movies is wiped away and we are given a striking look into a relatively unexplored era of American history. Set in 1934 the America we see is one locked in the Great Depression, an America where the horse and six shooter are being replaced by the Ford and the Tommy Gun, where telephones, radio and wiretaps are becoming the modern tools of the law enforcer but where, for a while yet, tracking camp sites and picking over dirt tracks are the skills needed to corner the criminals.

Another interesting aspect explored by the film is the celebrity status Bonnie and Clyde held while they were alive. There were many in the country who viewed the two notorious criminals as heroes of the common man, modern Robin Hoods out to rob from the rich and give to the poor. History does not really seem to have held out that perspective but to many trapped in the grips of economic disaster anyone willing to strike back at the establishment that had so badly failed the American people were outlaw heroes.

But the best thing about it is that it mostly all did really happen. It really was a pair of retired Texas Rangers who tracked down Bonnie and Clyde in the style of an Old West posse and brought them to justice in a hail of gunfire. Frank Hamer joined Ranger Company C in 1906 and would serve with the rangers for around twenty seven years before he retired in 1932, just a week before Ma Ferguson fired all remaining Texas Rangers and replaced them with her own cronies, who were in turn discharged in 1935 by the next state governor. On several occasions Frank Hamer left the rangers for other jobs before eventually returning, these included serving as a special investigator seconded to the Sheriff's office of Harris County, serving as a deputy sheriff in Kimble County in 1914, a detective for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and in 1917 he became a federal agent in the Prohibition Unit. In 1922, returned to the Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer was one of the officers leading the charge against the Ku Klux Klan, personally saving fifteen individuals from lynch mobs. In the 1930's Frank Hamer worked for a variety of Oil Companies and was later recalled to duty with the rangers a number of times including to escort Governor Coke Stevenson to the Texas State Bank in Alice where Ballot Box 13 was being kept so that he could review the tally sheets. Stevenson suspected that the box contained fraudulent votes for then-Representative Lyndon Johnson. Two groups of glowering, armed men guarded the bank but both made way and fled in the face of the veteran Texas Ranger. Frank Hamer ultimately retired for the last time in 1949 and passed away just four years later.

So much of the story surrounding this time period, the individuals involved in this incident, heck even the politics surrounding the state of Texas in the 1930s are all far more fascinating than I had thought and The Highwaymen takes a deep dive into all of it in a way that is captivating. The cinematography is great, the dialogue flows well, details about the period, the characters, the plot all spill out of every scene in a way that is both informative and artful, the performances are all around solid, from Lee Simons to Ma Ferguson herself played by the excellent Kathy Bates. The locations, the architecture, the cars, everything is visually interesting and well executed. The sound design was not distracting but perfectly accentuated each scene and even the simple act of refraining from giving the viewer a close-up of Bonnie and Clyde through most of the film all helped build up the climax.

All told The Highwaymen is one of the most impressive things to have come out of Netflix yet. Little surprise then that Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic both seem to score the film in the mid fifty-percent, while the audience score is in the upper seventies. It seems like anything that doesn't have huge 3d robots or exploding cars is just too slow or too drab for today's critics. To be fair The Highwaymen is a relatively long and slow journey but well worth the trip in my opinion. There are simply very few things I didn't like about this film and practically nothing I would want to see changed. In conclusion I give The Highwaymen a 9 out of 10. Perhaps my love for all things history related is biasing my opinion on this but I don't care, it's a great film and for anyone interested in the 1930s, crime-dramas or true-story movies this is a must watch.