UN-GLORIFIED BONNIE AND CLYDE........."THE HIGHWAYMEN"........

The Highwaymen (2019)    Can't help wishing I liked this more than I do........

                  But it's a long, slow drag of a film, completely losing itself in its own atmosphere.........

                  Since it's designated task is telling the honest-to-God true story about the Texas Rangers who tracked down and killed Bonnie and Clyde, nobody expected a live-wire, explosive burst of creative cinema like Arthur Penn's groundbreaking 1967 film......

                  "The Highwaymen" has a way more blunt agenda........steeping itself in the grim, arid landscapes of Depression-era southwest America.......and casting a disgusted eye at the cult-of-personality and hero worship generated by Bonnie and Clyde among a poverty-stricken populace, drained of their savings by the collapsed economy.

                    Worthy goals and mostly well handled........but ultimately the movie wanders about with no sense of urgency, as if it's got all the time in the world to make its points.

                    When it should be at its most compelling, it stays stubbornly inert.

                    Not helping much........the gimmick of using Bonnie and Clyde as unseen props until the climactic massacre. I imagine the filmmakers must have judged this a clever idea, since their story solely concentrates on the weary camaraderie of the two lawmen......(the superb dream team of Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson)...........(it reminded us of how 1950's Biblical movies used to play peek-a-boo in depicting Jesus.....a leg here, an arm there, etc, etc.....)

                   For a while, Costner and Harrelson are a pure joy to watch, an aged law-enforcement Odd Couple, bemused and confounded by J.Edgar Hoover's fledgling FBI agents using new-fangled stuff like wiretaps and crime scene forsensics.

                   .........but as the movie slows down to a crawl, infatuated with its own ambiance  to the point of becoming a still life portrait, you'll find yourself checking your watch.

                   A prime example - Costner's somber, sad meeting with Clyde Barrows' father (William Sadler)........the two actors perform this brilliantly, but the film dilutes the scene's power by stretching it out so it's almost a miniature one-act play in itself.......

                    There's enough here to make "The Highwaymen" worth watching.........but just barely.
2 stars (**) for a true story that needed a little more discipline and craft from its storytellers.......