BONNIE AND CLYDE

dMYD DVD
Starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway

D

Outlaw fiction relies on the cast iron-steel alloy fact that all of us, no matter how boring or polite or employed by Child Protection Services, all of us desperately, subconsciously want to rocket around the sunlit plains of Middle America, shooting, maiming, killing, thieving and fucking in a whirling dervish of pure brilliance and joie de vivre. Bonnie and Clyde does all of that, with impeccable style (Warren Beatty looks sharp as a sharpened flick knife even wearing shades with a lens shot out) as well as that other magic ingredient to living and stuff: love. Certainly in the upper Cassavetes-Balconies of coolest movies ever made, the film is awesomely shot throughout, from the Greysville crawl of the opening scenes to the flash fire bang-bang-death-run of the closing seconds. Everyone jumps into their roles so brilliantly that you start to think you’re watching some forgotten newsreel from a parallel earth where people weren’t dicks, whilst Faye Dunaway’s performance is still probably the most eye-laceratingly attractive ever committed to celluloid, at least until Kathy Bates finally gets round to remaking And God Created Woman. But the thing that flicks it away from being the greatest music video ever made is the undercurrent of real, soul-jarringly wonderful love that beats through the piece from the couple’s first meeting. This is a world where nothing matters except Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and the film conveys their relationship so well that the audience knows this for a fact every time they look into each other’s eyes. Especially the last time.