The Highwaymen
Netflix ’s new movieThe Highwaymentells the tale of Bonnie and Clyde ’s final days from the perspective of the men who kill them - but how does it liken to the honest account ? Directed by John Lee Hancock , The Highwaymenstars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as former Texas Rangers Frank " Pancho " Hamer and Ben Maney Gault , respectively , who are play out of retreat and commissioned to trace down and kill the famous person steady terrorizing the central United States .
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Hancock ’s moving picture is a portmanteau word of truth and fiction , with colour and embellishment added to build a narrative of two old - school day lawmen butting up against innovative times . For example , the moving picture plays up the incompetency and hostility of Hoover ’s FBI and even has them botching Hamer and Gault ’s planned ambush of Bonnie and Clyde at their family home , which did n’t actually happen . Similarly , there was no dramatic car following through a moth-eaten field that allowed Bonnie and Clyde to run away Hamer and Gault ’s clutches . Let ’s fork the fact from the fiction inThe Highwaymen , and take a look at what we know about the real story of Bonnie and Clyde .
The Prison Break and Wade McNabb’s Death
The Highwaymenopens with a major event from towards the conclusion of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker ’s crime spree : a plan jailbreak of several criminal comrade from Eastham captive farm , where Clyde himself had once been an inmate . Though many of the details in this succession are take from the true story ( Barrow ’s associate left weapons to assistance in the escape , and one prison safety was killed while another was wounded ) , there are also some creative shore leave engage that set the tone for how The Highwaymen blends fact with embellishment .
accord toMy living With Bonnie & Clyde- a memoir written by Clyde ’s sister , Blanche Barrow - it was actually Clyde , not Bonnie , who fired a simple machine hitman into the treeline while the men made their escape . While he did that , Bonnie stayed in the car and tend on the horn to signal the men which way they should run . Moreover , Wade Hampton McNabb was not one of the seek escapees , so the view where he is dramatically impart behind is novelize . Wade McNabb was eventually kidnap and mutilate while on furlough , but he was stamp out by Barrow gang member Joe Palmer as revenge for McNabb ’s behaviour in prison , not for ratting the pack out to Hamer and Gault . It was Palmer , not Hamer and Gault , who arranged for McNabb ’s furlough .
The Real Hamer and Gault
The Highwaymenoffers some stories about Hamer ’s flower as a Texas Ranger that are in fact lifted from real life , if embellished in places . The story that Hamer tells Clyde ’s male parent - about being shot as a teenager by a rancher who tried to give him to ambush his business partner - is true , and Hamer really did give to pour down the rancher after he heal . The " manos arriba " storey that Gault tells is also based on trueness , though in reality it was bootleggers smuggling alcohol during the Prohibition that he killed , and there were only six of them , not sixty . Moreover , Gault himself was not actually present during this incident .
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Hamer and Gault were indeed one-time acquaintances before they were commissioned to hunt down Bonnie and Clyde together . Before joining the Texas Rangers , Gault had worked undercover for Hamer , as he had a talent for insinuating himself into criminal tintinnabulation - a talent that ’s showcased inThe Highwaymen , when Hamer sends Gault out to mellisonant - talk resident of the migrant summer camp . The two family became close , and Hamer did indeed specifically choose Gault to be his pardner after being approach for the Bonnie and Clyde job .
Though Hamer and Gault experience several frustrative near - girl of Bonnie and Clyde inThe Highwaymen , in real biography they did n’t really becharm up to the couple until the lying in wait on the good morning of May 23 , 1934 . As render in the movie , Hamer refused lucrative offers from the media to spill the gory particular of the Bonnie and Clyde shootout , and both he and Gault were said to have disliked the aid that the case brought upon them . Hamer said that he was " sickened by the sight " of the gunplay ’s consequence .
The Real Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde themselves are not the central focussing ofThe Highwaymen , and actually look very little - glimpsed mainly from far away , with their facial expression only intelligibly shown in the instant before their death .
Perhaps the biggest change thatThe Highwaymenmakes to the real story of Bonnie and Clyde is play up Bonnie Parker ’s function as a femme fatale - not only burn down a machine gun into the trees to cover the prison house good luck , but also stalking over to pull down patrolmen and turning them over so that they could see their deaths coming as she shot them in the typeface . This is based on the bill of William Schieffer , the Fannie Merritt Farmer exhibit witnessing the Easter Sunday killings of patrolmen Wheeler and Murphy inThe Highwaymen . However , other attestator contradicted this claim and it was ultimately discredited - though not before enkindle public outrage against Bonnie .
apart from Schieffer ’s title , there ’s no grounds that Bonnie actually down anyone , or even that she ever give the sack a throttle , though she was obviously complicit in the Barrow gang ’s crime . At the clock time of her dying , she had never really been charged with a majuscule crime . The point that she drag her left heel after poorly burning her pegleg in a railcar stroke is based on real life , as is the bunny rabbit ( called Sonny Boy ) that Bonnie managed to successfully endue to her mother , despite being intensely pursued by the law in the final months of her life .
Page 2:The Shootout and the Aftermath
There Are Varying Accounts of the Bonnie and Clyde Shootout
As seen inThe Highwaymen , Bonnie and Clyde were eventually waylay by a posse comitatus of six lawman : Hamer and Gault , Texas officers Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton , Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan , and Jordan ’s deputy , Prentiss Oakley . Notably , all three of these duos characterized the ambuscade other than with conflict testimonial , and historians have speculated that each account was embellished by the fabricator ’s own schedule . The Highwaymensticks with the broader detail that are logical across all account : that Ivy Methvin , Fatherhood of Barrow gang member Henry Methvin , agree to help in the ambuscade , and that his truck was planted in the road so that Clyde would slow down .
Though inThe Highwaymenthere is a dramatic mo where Hamer settle to step out into the route to be the first to face Bonnie and Clyde , and Gault pace out after him , the conflicting reports make it difficult to determine if this is actually what happened , or even if Bonnie and Clyde were given fair warning before the shooting began . Here is Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton ’s accounting of the shooting , from a newspaper theme at the time :
There must have been a signal given , but who it descend from is another affair . We just all act together , stepped out into the road and prove our guns . We all yelled " Halt ! " at once . They did n’t halt . The car was exit slowly and Clyde allow go of the bicycle . We could see him grab at a gun in his lap . Bonnie was run for something on the other side .
Then all hell broke free . There were six men dash at once … You could n’t hear any one slam . It was just a roar , a uninterrupted bellowing , and it kept up for several minutes . We abandon our accelerator , reloaded and kept shooting . As we derail into sight , I could see Clyde reach as if to get his gun . But he never had a chance to burn a shot . Neither did Bonnie , tho we learned a few minutes afterward that they both were carrying rifles across their lap covering .
After shooting the scattergun , we emptied the shooting iron at the auto , which had passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 grand on down the route . It almost turn over . We keep shooting at the auto even after it stopped . We were n’t taking any probability .
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The Grisly Details of the Shootout’s Aftermath
One of the trouble that Hamer and Gault case inThe Highwaymenwhen trying to track down Bonnie and Clyde is the span ’s celebrity , with many multitude viewing them favourably as modern - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. Robin Hoods . In the film ’s most sobering panorama , the adore crowd that formerly thronged around the living couple with proclamation of love and extolment takings when they are did , to essay and take photos and gather " relic " from the eubstance .
This is , disturbingly , free-base on what actually happened - except that the crowd did n’t hold off for the cable car to be towed back before descending . One man tried to cut off Clyde Barrow ’s initiation finger , and another tried to cut off his left pinna . A woman cut off bloody clumps of Bonnie Parker ’s tomentum , and act of blood - stain wearable were cut aside from both of their bodies . Meanwhile , less daring member of the crowd tuck up fragments of meth and shell shell . After the auto was towed back to Arcadia , thousands of masses descend on the townsfolk , hope for a look at the railway car and the body .
G take care the funerals of Bonnie and Clyde , with as many as 20,000 estimated onlookers at Bonnie ’s . The " death car " itself is still on display at Whiskey Pete ’s Hotel and Casino in Primm , Nevada .
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