Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker really were two armed robbers in the 1930s. They really did kill a number of people and really did die in an ambush in rural Louisiana in 1934. Over the years some exaggerated stories have popped up here and there, and the writers of this version chose to use some of the exaggerations to make a more interesting story. Be that as it may, and with the disclaimer at the ending credits that many things are fictionalized, taken as a whole it is a very interesting and well-made version of the Bonnie and Clyde story.Emile Hirsch is Clyde Barrow, only about 20 or 21 when this story starts in 1930. It was also the start of the great depression, work was scarce, money was scarce, and petty thief Barrow eventually turned to armed robbery. He was arrested more than once and sent to jail. It is there he had such bad experiences that he became even more hardened and his life of crime was partly to get back at the system. But on more than one occasion he voiced an intention to "pull off one more big one and quit."Very cute young British actress Holliday Grainger is Bonnie Parker, still a teenager when she met Barrow. For whatever reasons they took to each other and soon Bonnie became Clyde's partner in crime. Grainger does a great job with the role, showing a gradual but distinct transformation in attitude as the story progresses.The other key character is William Hurt as Frank Hamer, a semi-retired lawman who was asked specifically to track down and get Bonnie and Clyde. And it is his persistence, with the help of one of Clyde's former associates, that they finally caught up with them in the rural NW Louisiana location. They made no attempt to arrest them, they just shot everything they had to make sure both of them were dead.So, even though much of the story and details surely are fabricated and not intended to be taken as fact, the core of the story over the 4 years from 1930 to 1934 is factual. I saw it as one continuous movie on Netflix streaming movies.

I don't claim to be an expert on Bonnie & Clyde, nor even to have as avid an interest as some of the other reviews I've read pertaining to this title, but I still appreciate some degree of honesty whenever the story focuses on real characters. And I am going to go ahead and assume that this movie has more plot holes than it has bullet holes.Clyde is portrayed as more of a foil for Bonnie, who seems to boss him around and have no interest in him or anything but the thrill of notoriety. I don't know how much of this is true, but it did seem to me that Bonnie & Clyde were supposed to be lovers rather than a one-sided fling. Clyde has a weird third sight that basically serves as an ongoing spoiler and as a way to make the film more exciting (because God knows nothing else does). Bonnie just seems kind of obsessed and prone to panic attacks whenever the spotlight isn't on her.The movie basically consists of a bunch of boring dialogue, pointless historical inaccuracies, and newspapers summarizing what would be the real action of the robberies. In short, a documentary would be much more exciting and informative of Bonnie & Clyde's story.I watched this all in one 3-hour dosage on Netflix, and it wasn't so boring that it was unbearable, but it wasn't memorable or even a good way to kill my Saturday. The acting and filmography weren't all bad, but the plot and dialogue were dull and sometimes laughable.

Having been seduced by her performance in The Borgias, I watched this purely because I spotted Holliday Grainger in the cast list. While she's no Lucrezia in this, she holds her own with a charismatic performance and believable accent. Emile as Clyde was a pleasant surprise; likable and authentic. However, liberties have clearly been taken with the interpretation of true events. Take it with a pinch of salt and enjoy it for what it is - an indulgent retelling of an iconic piece of American history which infuses fact with fiction for impact. There's eye candy aplenty with props and casting, and the music adds atmosphere. It's easy to get a sense of the period and it left me feeling vaguely nostalgic and inspired to find out more about the reality behind the story.

Boy is this a bad film! And I don't understand it - the cast was good enough but the writers and movie makers made choices in fictionalizing the story to the point where I was just tearing my hair out, screaming at the TV (I saw this, of course, at home). I won't be a spoiler, so I can't get into details but all I want to say here is: avoid this piece of trash! The Warren Beatty movie was so much better and so much truer to the real story it's not funny. (And this is the first bad review I've posted on this site - and I've posted quite a few.) If you do watch this movie, then you owe it to yourself afterward to read a few good books or even just read their wikipedia write-up. You'll then also be angry at all of the fabrications in this film. Why did they choose to diverge from the truth, which makes an even better story than the lie they chose to tell? Sorry. I think movie makers owe true subjects a heavy dose of respect when they present a story that most movie goer will think is true - to present a lie, as they do here, is unconscionable, especially with two such iconic and infamous yet important characters in our nation's history.