Movie review time ...

Been watching a good film lately, several times in fact. To see it, you will need Netflix. I’m talking about the Netflix film The Highwaymen. It tells the story of two aged Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) who set out to stop the murderous rampage of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. It is superbly done, worth watching, if for no other reason, than to see actress Kim Dickens playing Hamer’s wife. Ahh.

We might view the film as a correction of the 1967 (highly romanticized and inaccurate) version that pictured Frank Hamer, known as the most famous Texas Ranger of all, as a bumbling meanie played by Denver Pyle. This new film doesn’t always follow history, but the inaccuracies derive from maintaining a storyline and screenwriter’s license. It plays heavily on the popular adoration of the outlaws. Actually, as Jeff Guinn tells us in his meticulously researched biography Go Down Together, the public allure of the pair disappeared after the April 1, 1934 cold-blooded murder of Texas Highway Patrolman H.D. Murphy near Grapevine, Texas.

Guinn says that one of the other gang members did the murder, not Bonnie or Clyde. But Patrolman Murphy was engaged to be married, and after his finance wore her wedding dress to his funeral, public sentiment for the country’s most famous criminal pair evaporated like a Texas wind funnel.

The interplay between the old rangers is a marvelous bit of cinema, played by two great talents who aren’t afraid of growing old on screen. I can’t imagine how the producers managed to capture the look and feel of Depression-era America, but they did. Wonderful, wonderful, film.

I became fascinated with Bonnie and Clyde as a pre-teenager because I thought they looked a bit like my mother and daddy. You can imagine the fantasies that produced. The fascination continued into adulthood and culminated some months ago in a road trip with pal Sonny Rhodes. We trekked to the actual site, near Gibsland, Louisiana, where the duo was gunned down, sans Mirandizing, by a group of law officials that included, yes, Frank Hamer and Maney Gault.

Oh, and I leave you with a tidbit from Arkansas. One brief scene in the film shows Frank Hamer reviewing crime scene photographs of some victims of Bonnie and Clyde. One quick snippet is, I am told by Alma, Arkansas officials, the actual photo of Marshall Henry Humphrey.

As the city marshal of Alma, he was making his rounds on the night of June 22, 1933, when he was surprised by Bonnie and Clyde's gang. They forced him into the town bank, tied him to a pillar with baling wire, and stole the bank's small safe. They even stole Humphrey's gun.

The next afternoon he again unexpectedly ran into the gang, this time on a road north of town. A shootout ensued, Humphrey was mortally wounded, and the gang then stole his replacement gun. The city recently erected a monument to Marshall Humphrey.

Bonnie and Clyde were holed-up in a motel in Oklahoma at the time, having sent the gang members to Fayetteville to rob a grocery. The film (somewhat) accurately pictures Bonnie with a limp from being burned with battery acid when Clyde ran their car off a bridge. Guinn says that, by the time of her death, Clyde actually had to carry her.

The duo appears only briefly in the film. They mostly serve as off-screen presences. The film is about Hamer and Gault, two old lawmen sharing one more adventure with grouches and insights sharing equal billing..

Watch the film. It’s real sleeper. If you don’t have Netflix, subscribe. Else ways, burst in on someone who does. Not me though, some other feller.

Where the crime spree ended.

Reconciliation: Day Two

In thinking about the differences in how I see the world and how that view differs from that of many friends, I realize that sometimes we are pushed too relentlessly by the media and public sentiment. We are pushed hard to choose sides when the facts and issues are so complex that a simple stand is non-productive, if not impossible. It happens, it seems to me, all the time.

For example, let’s choose a currently controversial topic: law enforcement.

I begin by saying that, as an overall belief strategy, I support our police officers. I believe that we all benefit from the thousands upon thousands of brave men and women who patrol our meanest streets while we lie safely abed. If there are cases of malpractice, and there will be, let justice prevail, by all means. But let us consider, calmly I hope, that for every instance of insensitivity, meanness, or worse, there are millions of lonely hours spent guarding us against our most ignoble instincts.

We should support the ones who do that. And while we do, let us strive, without ceasing, to train the best and to weed out those who don’t measure up. To condemn, or even to ignore, an entire profession can never bode well for our country.

I say this, for one reason, because, though never a police officer myself, I do know, first hand, what it is like to spend an extended period of your life in mortal danger for a thankless public. Simple support can provide such a wondrous blessing.

What happens when we don’t support law enforcement? Well, in my state, most cities are experiencing considerable difficulty in hiring and retaining police officers. Low pay is one reason. (We’ll discuss taxes on another day). Another is the loss of prestige we have bestowed upon law enforcement in recent years. I further believe that these two reasons are related.

Back to our choices. Should we turn a blind eye toward any malpractice by a police officer? Certainly not, no more than we should turn away from the malpractice of a physician, an engineer, an attorney, a teacher, or, heaven forbid, an urban planner. But I remember what Alistair Cooke said of H.L. Mencken, that he wrote his scathing and often heartless denouncements of others “in a warm room and on a full stomach.” Do we ever do the same with law enforcement? Could we all just think on that?

In the meantime, couldn’t we choose the side of support and trust? Yes, yes, I know. As a descendent of white, Anglo-Saxon, northern Europeans, I’ve benefited from many breaks not always afforded those of other backgrounds. Based on that, I try to adopt the stance that “to whom much is given, much is expected.” I try not to go out of my way to act a fool. (Please do not bother my wife by asking her for verification).

I backslide. Not long ago my foot became a little heavy on the pedal. Yep. The blue lights started flashing. When the officer approached, I handed him my papers and said, “Sir, you got me fair and square. No excuses.” He laughed and went back to his vehicle to call in and make sure I hadn’t just escaped from Attica. I sat chewing out myself—not him—up one side and then the other.

When he returned, he laughed, handed me my papers and said, “In all my, career, I’ve never had anyone say that. Now get out of here and keep it safe.” It may not always work, but it sure beats the hell out of being a smart-ass and giving someone a cursing for doing a thankless job.

We are free to choose one side and hate the other if we wish. I think I'll choose to assume the best and resist the worst.

It just seems to me…