Enjoyable Low-Budget Indie…
This watered-down version of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s famed story has been crafted by very busy director David DeCoteau, for the sum of $1 million making it quite an impressive attempt at their tale. It dilutes certain facts which is forgivable in this instant, and isn’t really my concern when it comes to the entertainment value of a straight-to-DVD flick. I genuinely held no hope of getting much out of Bonnie & Clyde: Justified, by David DeCoteau as I’ve seen loads of his other affairs, like his abundant 1313 franchise which I find less than adequate when wanting to pass 80 minutes, however, DeCoteau’s older movies were a different matter, and some of those were quite cool.
- Bonnie & Clyde: Justified
- Directed by
David DeCoteau - Cast
Ashley Hayes, Jim Poole, Hagen Mills, Eric Roberts, Dee Wallace, Jean Louise O’Sullivan - Release Date
5 November 2013 - Ed’s Grade: C-
Bonnie & Clyde: Justified, has appealing characters, an interesting story and introduces the talented and sexy Ashley Hayes to her first lengthy role. It also brings in a couple of obligatory ‘names’ to add to the sellability of this low-budget movie, with Dee Wallace playing Mrs Parker and Eric Roberts as ex Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. The music was also decent with the end title song particularly good, but wasn’t listed in the credits for me to be able to share the name. There were obviously several shortcomings that go with films of this type and some of the dialogue could have been bettered, but I still got more than I bargained for.
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It started off a little shaky but soon settled down to the job of entertaining which it succeeding in doing quite well. The story is sometimes told with Bonnie (Ashley Hayes) doing monologue using either her poetry or diary reads, or sometimes with old-looking sepia photographs, helping to both enhance the storytelling and save on costs. A lot of the shots were kept tight for obvious reasons but the overall effect still worked well enough.
The prison scene was unintentionally funny as a gay inmate (the only inmate we ever actually see) was hitting in Clyde (Jim Poole) with some excellent overacting. If you can overlook the low-budget trappings, you’re left with a historically inaccurate film, that’s reasonably well acted, and has great characters to follow. Moreover, it can also be watched with the family as it has a PG 13 rating.
Review by Ed Blackadder
