No need to be brash, just rob, pull-the-trigger and getaway
Bonnie Parker was a very bored girl. She certainly didn’t know what excitement was until she met up with Clyde Barrow, a man who almost ripped off her mother’s car. Doubting his history of bank robbing, Bonnie dares Clyde to rob a local grocery store in her very backwater city. When he obliges she seems to start what is the best, and most dangerous adventure, of her young life. Along the way, they pick up folks such as Buck Barrow (Clyde’s brother), C.W. Moss (a car repairman and their getaway driver), and Buck’s off-the-wall wife, Blanche. Packed with guns, starving for money and willing to kill, the group sets off on a cross-country spree that ultimately ends in tragedy.
First and foremost, this tale truly doesn’t follow the actual Bonnie and Clyde story. So for those historians out there ready to pounce on it, easy tigers. Beatty, Arthur Penn (director), David Newman and Robert Benton put together such a visual and emotional roller-coaster ride that you’ll actually feel bad for the two crooks at the end of the film. What’s even more remarkable about what this gang of production folk did is that they brought quite possibly the most violent film that 1967 had probably ever seen. As I was viewing this Blu-ray (which we’ll talk about later — such a good format), I just couldn’t believe that this was the same year that A Man for All Seasons brought home the Academy Award (it was rated G), which most people (apparently including the academy) considered to be the best film. Bonnie and Clyde, which was at the Oscars in 1968, nearly brought home the same golden trophy. That is a huge swing in tastes for one year. And yet, everything violent about it really brought the story together.
Speaking of which, the story itself is a lot more complex than it really shows. You get to see two wild, young lovers in the prime of their lives. From an innocent, care-free beginning to a more mature and unfortunate end. You have the opportunity to see them grow-up as individuals and as a couple. For a couple of characters who did terrible things, Penn and his writers really brought out the best of the two characters. They definitely shaped their world and gave the audience a great glimpse of how everything worked and how in reality they were just a bunch of folks with nothing to lose. And maybe, without getting to artsy, their lives were what all the folks during the great depression were trying to strive to be. I can back this up with the first place that Bonnie and Clyde stayed in the film. They end up at a broken down house after the first bank robbery. They come face-to-face with a family who had just lost their home to a bank that foreclosed on them. Clyde stops short of shooting the father of the family when he realizes who they are and why they’re at the house. When he realizes it, he offers the gun to the family (and caretaker) to shoot-up the sign in front of it. At this point, you can’t hate Bonnie and Clyde for doing what they’re doing in the film. They are viewed as a modern day Robin Hood, in a way. And they begin to grow/mature from that point on. Later in the film, this process is repeated again, they rob a bank, but tell one of the poor/old customers to take his money, it’s not the bank’s.
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