Plot summary (with spoilers): In the 1930's, during The Great Depression, Clyde Barrow was a small-time bank robbing crook. He wasn't particularly good or memorable as a crook, and history would've long forgotten him, were it not for his choice of partner in crime.
Bonnie Parker was a spoiled, bored child of apathetic parents and had an apparently busted moral compass.
They Meet Cute when Bonnie catches Clyde trying to steal her mother's car. She playfully reproaches him, but isn't really upset, and they go riding off in it together. Clyde tells her he's a bank robber, but she doesn't believe him, so pulls a job in town right in front of her. They go speeding off, fleeing the pursing bank employees.
They pull off into a field to count the loot, and Bonnie's so hot and bothered, she starts making out with Clyde right then and there. He reciprocates begrudgingly, and when it becomes clear she wants to round all the bases he gently and then not-so gently rebuffs her. She's embarrassed, and just wants to go home. He tells her that he doesn't want her to go home. So she doesn't.
They travel the countryside for awhile, stopping off occasionally for money that isn't theirs and swapping cars when it seems like it's time. Once, while robbing a convenience store, Clyde is attacked from behind by a customer, and they barely escape, after Clyde's forced to beat the guy senseless. They're both genuinely confused. They met the man no harm, why'd he have to make it so difficult?
They decide they need to recruit a getaway driver, so they literally take their car in for repairs and tell the car mechanic that they rob banks, and would he like to join them? Yes, he would. That was...remarkably easy.
The mechanic's a youngish 18 or so, named C.W. Moss, and he agrees to wait outside a bank while Bonnie and Clyde enter it. But a car comes up behind C.W., who is blocking the road and honks at him. C.W. is nothing if not a courteous driver, and politely parallel parks about a block away.
In my lifetime, I have driven a getaway car exactly zero times, and yet I can anticipate a problem here.
Sure enough, our "heroes" come tearing out of the bank and there's no car. They run around desperately, then hear C.W. honking. A banker runs out with a gun. Some cops run up. C.W.'s still trying to get out of his spot, wedged between two other cars. Finally, he does so, but not after Clyde winds up shooting and killing a bank employee. They get away, but Clyde declares they need to lay low somewhere out of state until the heat dies down.
They wind up visiting Clyde's brother Buck and his shrill and unlovely wife, Blanche. Buck's a recent parolee and he knows a perfect cabin where they can all hang out for the winter. Blanche is annoying and clingy and hates Bonnie on site, who feels mutually.
They hide out in some cabin in the outskirts of town, but still have groceries delivered. Meanwhile, the radio reports that the bank robber/killer was one Clyde Barrow, and he was with an unidentified blonde and driver. The grocery delivery boy is suspicious when he sees the windows covered with cardboard and when Bonnie won't let him bring the groceries inside.
The next thing you know, a couple of cop cars pull up outside the cabin. Clyde motions for everyone to be quiet and play it cool, but immediately Blanche starts screaming. The cops take that as a sign to start shooting, naturally. Buck, Clyde, C.W., and Bonnie shoot their way out the door, while Blanche literally just runs and screams while flapping her arms around. Buck kills a couple cops. They all jump in the car and speed off, picking up Blanche who has run down the road. Bonnie screams at her and she screams back and Clyde says family doesn't yell at family and Buck says they're all in this now.
After a while on the run and pulling jobs, a Texas lawman tries to ambush them, but is caught by Buck. They tie him up and take pictures with him in ridiculous poses, with Bonnie pretending to smoke a cigar and stroke his face. Everyone's having a grand old time. They leave him tied up with the roll of film in his pocket.
The papers call them the "Barrow Gang", and give them false credit for many jobs they didn't even pull, and eventually Bonnie is positively identified as well as Buck and Blanche. Only C.W.'s identity is a secret to the public.
Bonnie grows despondent with the new shitty life she's made for herself. She's homesick for her family, and still wonders why Clyde won't have sex with her. In a heartbreaking scene, Bonnie manages to convince Clyde to let her visit her family, so Bonnie's mom and siblings meet her in an open field where Clyde tells Bonnie's mom that he takes real good care of her and won't let her go on any robberies that seem too dangerous and one day they'll retire and she and Bonnie can be neighbors. Mom cuts through the tremendous pile of bullshit Clyde's slinging and says she hopes that Bonnie is never her neighbor, because that would mean the cops could find her and kill her. Then she senses that that's the best exit line possible, and leaves.
One night, they're staying in a cheap motel and Bonnie asks Clyde that if they could wipe the slate clean and start over, would he do it? Clyde says yes, no doubt. First thing he'd do differently, is never commit any robberies in his home state. Always go across the border. Clyde seems to have missed the point of the question.
That same night, C.W. and Blanche go into town for supplies and the store keeper sees a gun on C.W.'s hip. He narrows his eyes forebodingly.
A bit later, the cops pull up to the motel silently. They knock on Buck and Blanche's door. Everyone panics. Buck and Clyde burst out shooting. There's chaos as everyone races to the car. Several cops are shot. One manages to get Buck in the head. He goes down. Blanche screams even louder. She and Clyde drag him into the car. The window next to Blanche bursts, shattering glass and cutting her face. Bonnie, in the driver's seat, races off.
They drive for a bit and manage to lose the pursing cops. They speed off into the woods. Buck's muttering incoherent nonsense, but still alive. They finally pull off into a field and get out. They bandage up Buck's face the best they can, and Blanche turns her gaze to the heavens and with blood streaming down her face, begs God to save her husband's life. God's response is straight-up Old Testament, as Blanche suddenly begins screaming anew. "I'M BLIND! I'M BLIND!"
Bonnie crawls over to her and holds her as she weeps.
The next morning, Buck is dead, and Blanche lay curled up in Bonnie's arms, sunglasses on her face.
Aaand the cops are back. They start shooting on site, and Bonnie fully abandons blind Blanche and jumps in the car with Clyde and C.W.
Clyde gets shot in the arm while driving and crashes the car about half a mile away. The three of them jump out and begin running in earnest. They reach a river bank. Bonnie gets shot in the should. She cries out, but they keep going. Eventually, somehow they get away.
After traveling for awhile, they steal another car and C.W. drives them to his father's house. The father is shocked to find two shot up people traveling with his son, but takes them in anyway.
In the meantime, an arrested Blanche is questioned by the very Texas lawman who they tied up months earlier. He asks Blanche the name of the fifth member, the getaway driver, and she gives it up freely, without even realizing the implications.
After more time has passed, Bonnie and Clyde are healed mostly from their gunshot wounds, and agree amongst themselves to quit the life. You know, no harm done and all. They even finally have sex, which was surprising because I figured Clyde was impotent.
They decide to go into town the next day with C.W. and get supplies. C.W.'s dad tells C.W. to ditch them once they get into town. He's made a deal with the police. C.W. will only get a few years if he can bring the cops Bonnie and Clyde. C.W. confidently says that no one will ever get them.
But in town, he follows his father's orders and gets lost. Bonnie and Clyde attempt to search for him, but then see a cop car in town and decide to drive back home to the father's farm and pick C.W. up later.
On the way home, they see C.W.'s father on the side of the road. His hood's up, and he's waving for help. Clyde pulls over and walks over to him. Something wrong with your car?
C.W.'s father nods, then suddenly throws himself on the ground and rolls under his car. Clyde looks confused. A flock of birds suddenly takes flight. He looks up. Sees about twenty lawmen emerge from the bushes. They fire, engulfing both lovers with enough bullets to take out a T-9000.
The end.
Or is it?
Yes.
Review: There's sort of a crushing, heavy feeling of inevitable shit that's hovering over the entire proceedings. However you feel about these kinds of movies, where there's no real "heroes" and where we're asked to identify with the villains, will obviously influence your enjoyment. This isn't a Walter White type deal either, where our anti-hero becomes a flat-out villain over time; these people are just bad from the start. So you have to look at this as a character study, and it works really well as that. I like these types of movies, where you watch people make bad decisions, one after another in a slow-moving car wreck kind of way. And despite it all, some of the characters do engender a small amount of sympathy, particularly Bonnie and C.W., who both became enamored of Clyde and didn't really understand the implications of the lives they were choosing until it was too late. (And C.W. never really did). And I could definitely see how a character as whiny as Blanche would be off-putting to many, but that's her function in the story. Everything is going pretty okay for the group until she and Buck enter the picture and she winds up ruining everything by screaming and giving them all away. Estelle Parsons (Roseann's mom on Roseanne) really knocks it out of the park in this role, and deserves her Oscar win. The scene where she goes blind is the most chilling in the whole movie.
I was also pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be an ensemble movie, with five gangsters instead of two, like I expected. No particular reason, I just like ensemble movies best. Especially if some monster is killing them off one by one. Those are awesome.
Stars: Four out of five.
Next, "King Kong", and then the hills come alive and I throw myself down them in a vain attempt to avoid "The Sound of Music".
No comments:
Post a Comment