Highwaymen

The Highwaymen | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix
In 1934, Bonnie & Clyde were depression era heroes, except for the bit about killing a dozen folks, mostly lawmen. They have been robbing and shooting their way around the central USA for a couple of years when the governor of Texas, Ma Ferguson (Kathy Bates), finally gets fed up and agrees to let Lee Simmons (John Carroll Lynch) call in a couple of old, retired Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) & Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) to track down these killers.

The movie follows these two grizzled law enforcement veterans driving all over Texas and Oklahoma and eventually Louisiana, hunting Bonnie & Clyde. We see lots of depression era poverty. Some of the scenes look like the homeless campgrounds we have now, but back then they were outside of town, not camped out right downtown. Of course, back then there was a lot less town and a lot more open country. Ma Ferguson gets a bad rap for disbanding the Texas Rangers. They were reconstituted after she left office.

The thing that gets me is that we have these bright young men with their modern equipment, methods and bureaucracy and they haven't been able to catch these two outlaws. It takes these two old timers, using old time methods to put a stop to their rampage.

I enjoyed the heck out of it. It felt totally real. The visit to the gun shop was a bonus.


Highwaymen - Gun Shop
I hadn't heard of the Colt Monitor before.


Colt monitor
It's basically a B.A.R. (Browning Automatic Rifle). I remember hearing about the B.A.R. when I was a kid, probably on shows like Combat, where it was spoken of reverently. It's a serious weapon.

Update September 2019 replaced missing gun shop video.