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Reviews
The Highwaymen (2019)
Great acting, great story, great ending
This wasn't really a wanted-dead-or-alive manhunt (personhunt?). When Lee Simmons offers Hamer the job, he says it's to put Bonnie and Clyde "on the spot." In those days and in that context, that meant "set them up to be killed." So even if you didn't know what really happened, this would have told you.
Hamer's attitude toward them is shown in what I think is the best line in the movie, when he shows the Dallas deputy how Bonnie rolled the wounded copper over onto his back "so he could see what was coming," then says, "The kids you grew up with aren't human anymore." The movie is really a study of the relationship between Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, and the two actors are fantastic. And the ending? Well, someone who knew the true story once said, "Bonnie and Clyde were psychopathic pieces of ____, and the only bad thing about them getting killed was, it didn't happen soon enough." (Oh wait, that was me that said that.)
I give it 9 stars, mainly for not glorifying the psychopaths. It would have 10, except that some of the things depicted (the dusty car chase, for one) didn't really happen.
(Another nice touch: Ma Ferguson (who in real life became governor when her husband died before he could be sent to prison) originally calling Hamer and Gault washed-up anachronisms, then telling the press she knew they would get the job done. "That's why I chose them." Typical politician.)
Killer Women (2014)
A laugh riot
I watched the first show and I had high hopes for about three minutes. In the first big scene, the local copper who doesn't like Our Hero (hereafter, OH) calls her "Cinco Peso." Since Texas Rangers' stars are traditionally stamped from Mexican five-peso pieces, I thought maybe someone had done some real research. A few minutes later, after the villain, Little Miss Red Shoes (LMRS), commits the murder, OH interviews a witness while the witness is splattered with the victim's blood. I've done that, but I've never seen it on TV before, so my hopes rose even higher. Then OH shows the witness a surveillance-camera photo of LMRS and says, "Is this her?" When she did that she made anything he said inadmissible in court. You have to show your witness at least six photos of similar-looking people to make sure the witness is identifying the suspect, and you're not identifying the suspect to the witness.
The first half of the show was silly. During the second half of the show, everything she did was illegal. And at the end, she proved that LMRS didn't mean to do it, she was coerced by the drug cartel, so everything was hunky-dory, right? Except that coercion is a defense for every crime EXCEPT murder, so the whole thing was pointless.
But she carried a 1911 .45 and petted cows, and I like 1911s and cows, so I decided to give the show another shot.
The second show was even sillier. First, her DEA boyfriend was working on his airplane's engine (against the law, only an FAA-licensed technician can touch an aircraft engine). Then, when she has to draw her gun, she holds it in a "cup-and-saucer" grip that hasn't been taught since about 1972. But on the upside, the villain in this one was a perky blonde whose life apparently depended on having everything below her hips exposed to daylight at all times. But even that couldn't make me go beyond two episodes.