THE HIGHWAYMEN (2019) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: John Lee Hancock
Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson, Kathy Bates,
John Carroll Lynch, Kim Dickens, William Sadler
Costner and Harrelson play old Texas Rangers coaxed out of retirement to help take down Bonnie and Clyde. Costner's career circles back on itself with this, to 1987, when he played Eliot Ness in "The Untouchables" and went after Al Capone. Both stars look a bit weathered - they're at an age where that happens - and it suits a couple of characters who have been out of the game for a while and can feel the years and the rust, but still know more about how to track bank robbers than all the young hotshots from J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. They play off each other with cantankerous ease, and it's fun just watching them work. There's plenty of Depression-era detail in the set design - when was the last time you saw a box of Pep Wheat Flakes? - and Thomas Newman's musical score sets the mood, letting you know when things are about to get tense. Even Costner's haircut looks authentic to the period. It's an interesting narrative choice that you don't get a good look at Bonnie and Clyde till their bullet-riddled demise. The lawmen know they're all to real, from the way they keep finding clues and the bodies keep piling up, but the outlaws are elusive, phantoms almost, always slipping away before the cops show up. At least until the end.
