drqshadow

7/10

Born without a penny to their names, nor the promise of a future worth living, a pair of depression-era twenty-somethings find motivation in one another. Emboldened by their romance and certain about their invulnerability, the pair sets off to get rich quick via a string of car thefts and brazen, bloody daylight robberies. Joined by a small trio of accomplices, tales of their exploits soon capture the public imagination in an age when many felt hopeless, crushed and discarded by the system. This film brings us up-close and personal with the title characters and their little family, learning about their various quirks and tics between heists. Like most young adults, Bonnie and Clyde’s self-confidence is both a blessing and a curse. Their opportunistic nature makes them difficult to track but also traps them in some very sticky situations. They don’t intend to commit mass murder, but when the other shoe drops (and it often does), sometimes their guns are the only way out and hey, better you than me. An experienced criminal, Clyde knows the score, but Bonnie sees their cross-country escapade as a sort of childish fantasy, never truly recognizing how much danger she’s in until the numbers catch up and the situation grows dire. They’re just kids, playing at being adults, but the law ain’t messing around. Looking back almost sixty years later, the amount of blood and violence depicted in _Bonnie and Clyde_ hardly seems excessive. It can be harsh and brutal at times, sure, but these doomed lovers chose a harsh, brutal life together and the film portrays that appropriately. Nobody’s ever robbed a bank with cap guns and candy apples, after all, or ditched the police by blowing kisses through a window. Way back in 1967, however, this was held up as evidence of our decaying moral fabric and many contemporary reviews were outraged. What kind of cinema will our children be watching, should this awful trend towards graphic bloodshed continue? I’d hate to see their reactions to Tarantino.

John Chard

0/10

Good afternoon, we are the Barrow gang. Bonnie & Clyde stands today as one of the most important films of the 60s, it's impact on culture alone marks it out as a piece of work to note, but as gangster films go this one is something of a landmark. Quite how writers Newman & Benton managed to craft a story of two deadbeat outlaws into cinematic heroes is up for any individual viewers scrutiny, but they bloody well do it because we all want to be in the Barrow gang, because we get lost in this romanticised outlawish tale unfolding in front of our eyes. The film is a fusion of incredible violence and jaunty slapstick, and smartly pauses for delicate moments to let us into the psyche of the main protagonists, we know they have hangups, and with that we know they are fallible human beings, and this sets us up a treat for the incredible jaw dropping finale, and the impact of this finale hits as hard now as it did back with the audience's of 1967. The cast are incredible, Warren Beatty gives a truly brilliant performance as Clyde, he looks good and suave tooting those guns, but it's in the tender troubled scenes where he excels supreme. Faye Dunaway as Bonnie is the perfect foil for Beatty's layers, she nails every beat of this gangsters troubled moll. Gene Hackman, Michael J Pollard, and Estelle Parsons put the cherry on the icing to give depth and range to the rest of the Barrow gang, and these fine actors are clothed in gorgeous cinematography courtesy of Burnett Guffrey. To round out the plaudits I finish with love for director Arthur Penn because it's his vision that gives us something of a nostalgic movie that plays up and down with its subjects with cheeky aplomb, in fact it's just like the banjo music that features so prominently throughout this wonderful film. Nominated for 9 Oscars it won just the two, the entire actors who played the Barrow gang were nominated, and truth be told they all would have been worthy winners, as it is they gave out just the one to the least strongest performance from Estelle Parsons, go figure. It's legacy both in culture and box office lives on and for me Bonnie & Clyde is not only one of the best films of the 60s, it's also one of the best in history. 10/10

CinemaSerf

0/10

Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) just happens to look out of her window one morning and spots a rather unsavoury looking fella (Warren Beatty) eyeing up her mother's car. Quick as a flash she is dressed and they are in this car never to look back. Realising that they are broke, they decide that robbing provincial shops and garages is actually a lucrative dawdle. It's at a garage, indeed, that they recruit CW Moss (Michael J Pollard) before hooking up with his brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons) before escalating their crime spree to banks and, of course, resulting in a fatality that cannot fail to galvanise the authorities. Soon they are most wanted with just about every cop in the state on their trail. Fortunately, these are not the best aimers - and their legend begins to grow. They are fêted wherever they go - a poverty stricken population seeing much to admire in their "entrepreneurial" spirit. It's history, so we know what happens - but that isn't really too important. Arthur Penn has put together a strong cast - especially Parsons who is great as the hysterical wife caught up in it all and Dub Taylor as the duplicitous "Moss Snr". The attention to detail is impressive - it looks great, the motor cars really didn't look like they could pull the skin off a custard. Beatty and Dunaway simply ooze chemistry and as the story progresses I challenge anyone not to be on their side... It's as entertaining and enjoyable to watch on screen as it is to read about the machinations of many in getting the thing made in the first place.

SkinnyFilmBuff

5/10

I was so impressed with Warren Beatty in _The Parallax View (1974)_, that I had to go back and catch up on his filmography. Unfortunately, I was not particularly impressed with this film, which is one of his biggest and earliest hits. While some may call it an unfair criticism, my biggest issue with the film was that it shows its age. It is the 1960's version of an action blockbuster, where a significant portion of the screen time is dedicated to extended car chases and shootouts. While those elements may have impressed audiences 50+ years ago, they did very little for me in 2022. It's an unfortunate fact that certain types of films will age more gracefully than others, which is how a more dialogue driven conspiracy thriller like _The Parallax View (1974)_ can blow me away, while this film leaves me bored. One would hope that the saving grace would be the acting. After all, the film had five performances nominated for Oscars, one of which won. However, the acting can only do so much in a film that is largely driven by action. This isn't to say that the performances are bad. There was plenty to praise. In particular, I thought Gene Hackman injected a lot of life into the script once he and Estelle Parsons came into the picture. But it wasn't enough to save the film for me. This is a simple story, and it didn't leave me particularly invested.