Movie Reviews for Bonnie and Clyde [Blu-ray]

Bonnie and Clyde [Blu-ray]

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Movie Reviews of Bonnie and Clyde [Blu-ray]

Movie Review: Blu-ray is the way to go...
Summary: 5 Stars

I'm not going to review the film, chances are you have already seen it and if not then there are plenty of glowing reviews to read over out there. Instead I'm going to review the Blu-ray Disc itself.

The transfer is glorious, the grain structure is intact as it was during Bonnie and Clyde's original theatrical run - thankfully Warners Bros have avoided using the grain removal techniques that other studios use on there Blu-ray Discs.

In short, Bonnie and Clyde has never looked better.

One area where Warner COULD have improved would to of included a better audio track than the lossy Dolby Digital track that is used here but that's a minor gripe and I'm just glad they did not convert it into a 5.1 soundtrack.

There are also numerous special features to watch over which makes this Blu-ray one heck of an evening killer!

To close, if you are a fan of the film then the Blu-ray Disc blows the DVD out of the water in terms of visual quality, this looks as good as it did when it was first screened in cinemas.

Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Bonnie and Clyde DVD Review
Summary: 5 Stars

Bonnie and Clyde is one of the finest American films ever made. The acting by everyone is outstanding, and in my opinion, Warren Beatty has given his best performance in this film. The dialog, music, cinematography, editing, etc., are all superb. I loved this film when I first saw it in 1967 and I still enjoy it even more on DVD. This is a timeless film.

Movie Review: Good Film Bad DVD!
Summary: 2 Stars

This is an interesting film that attempts to tell the tale of the famous Depression era bank robbers the Barrow Gang with special focus on the founder members Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Although the gunfights are loud and rather graphic for the times, they pale in comparison with upcoming future films like "Shaft" and "Dirty Harry" and indeed when compared with most Westerns and even James Cagney gangster films. Interesting that people took notice and some even offence at the gun-related violence here when blonde and blue-eyed people are involved but when many, many more native American Indians are shot at and massacred in the old cowboy Westerns nobody seemed to raise even an eyebrow. Still this film has been named as an inspiration to later more graphic gun-related violence in films and the opening semi-nude scene with Dunaway probably inspired more graphic nudity in future scenes as well.

What starts out as a dare becomes for a couple of bored amoral Southerners a one way ticket to destruction. We become sympathetic with the characters though as we realise that killers or not, they are still human beings and at the end you are left wondering if what Hamer does isn't just a "legal" version of murder. There are a number of poignant scenes that stand out such as the Bonnie composed poem about Bonnie and Clyde which she so matter-of-factly ends with the knowledge of their eventual destruction and burial and the scene with Bonnie's mother when they realise that they can never go back to the way things were ever again.

Too bad this dvd version is so poor though as the picture quality is full of imperfections and the sound quality comes only in Mono not to mention the complete lack of any bonus features worth mentioning as well. I've not seen the Blu-ray release yet but I hope that these issues have been addressed.

This is a good adventure and although not a completely accurate tale of the life of Bonnie and Clyde is still fun to watch and is worthy of a place in your dvd library. However, this dvd version leaves much to be desired and you should look at getting the restored and improved version while giving this one a miss.

Movie Review: Upgraded "Bonnie and Clyde" looks terrific in both Blu-ray and DVD editions
Summary: 5 Stars

"This here's Miss Bonnie Parker. I'm Clyde Barrow. We rob banks"-Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) "I ain't no lover boy"- Beatty as Clyde Barrow to Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway).

"Bonnie and Clyde" looks better than a depression era robber baron in his finest clothes. The colors pop and while the images are a bit soft at times (due to the aging of the source materials), Warner has done a stellar job of cleaning up the film making a marked improvement over the previous DVD bare bones release from over a decade ago. Packed with some extra cool extras including a multi-part documentary on the making of the film, a documentary licensed from The History Channel on the real "Bonnie and Clyde", deleted scenes (sadly without dialogue because the soundtrack is missing)and wardrobe tests, this is one of the best jobs I've seen of a 60's classic reissued on DVD and Blu-ray.

He might not have been a "lover boy" but Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow sure is pretty to look at on screen. Playing with his image as a pin-up, Beatty and the beautiful Faye Dunaway pull off their roles as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" despite their Hollywood looks. Penn has always been an adventurous filmmaker and his work with Beatty in "Mickey One" paid off with a solid, nuanced performance from Betty where others might have let the actor get away with a less thoughtful interpretation of the role. With "Bonnie and Clyde" Penn and Beatty (producer on the project) demonstrate a keen awareness of the French New Wave (originally director Francios Truffaut was approached to direct and its rumored that Jean Luc-Goddard the infant terrible of the New Wave movement was asked as well but his changes were so radical that he was rejected as a director for the film. Truffaut's most telling influence the elimination of Clyde Barrow's bisexuality in favor of making him impotent a choice that Penn also argued for when Beatty thought about going back to the original script by David Newman and Robert Benton) which influenced some of Penn's unusual visual choices for the film. The first time we meet Bonnie Parker we see only isolated close ups of her face as she puts on her make up and Penn gradually reveals the room as something less than the elegance that we might have expected from a Hollywood thriller like "Bonnie and Clyde". "Bonnie and Clyde" is notable for a shift with much more gruesome, violent sequences that Hollywood had seen before; in fact Penn claims that the sequence where Clyde shoots the manager of a bank in the face as he tries to stop their car was the very first time that a Hollywood film showed the shooter and the victim all in the same single shot. If that is so, it's a startling change that influenced the rest of Hollywood for good and bad over the course of the next forty some years.

Penn, Beatty, screenwriters Benton & Newman (and an uncredited Robert Towne who receives a "creative consultant" credit since he couldn't claim a writing credit for his work) do take some liberties with the story of bank robbers Barrow and Parker but in the interest of the drama those liberties work creating a film that examines the characters and the world of foreclosed mortgages, depression era poor people and the wealthy who just kept getting wealthier in fine detail. Featuring stellar support from actors Gene Hackman as Clyde's brother, Gene Wilder (in his film debut), Michael J. Pollard and Estelle Parsons, "Bonnie and Clyde" has aged gracefully. Penn's brilliant visual motifs stand up surprisingly well. They draw attention to the characters and saying as much with as little dialogue as possible. Even where the facts are skirted (such as the fact that Bonnie Parker was badly burned and had to be carried most places by Clyde Barrow after a car accident), there's a logical dramatic reason for doing so.

The Blu-ray looks stunning as well but fans should be aware of the age of the film as this doesn't look quite as stunning as a more contemporary film might. Nevertheless, my jaw dropped as I haven't seen a print look THIS good even when I worked at the UCLA archives or sat through the film for the first time in one of Howard Suber's classes on film genres.

Audio sounds quite good but, again, keep in mind the original soundtrack was recorded, mixed and mastered in mono as that was the standard when this film played in theaters. Interestingly enough, fans will probably hear a better sounding version here on the DVD than when it played in theaters. Warner had so little faith in the film that it was released to drive-in's and second tier theaters initially (they also offered Beatty nearly half of the domestic gross as his fee figuring the film wouldn't make a huge amount of money. Someone at Warner probably paid with their job for such a miscalculation).

This deluxe two disc edition treats this classic with the respect it deserves; special features producer Laurent Bouzereau was called in to create the featurettes for the two disc edition demonstrating how much love Warner was willing to give the film. Bouzereau does his usual top notch job here.

"Revolution: The Making of 'Bonnie and Clyde'" is a three part documentary that covers everything from the fights that director Penn had with his cinematographer for his unusual stylistic choices to the checkered history of the film's production.

"Love and Death: The Story of Bonnie and Clyde" has been licensed from the History Channel and gives fans of the film the REAL story of the couple which is a nice contrast to the reel one were given by Penn and Beatty.

Also included are two deleted scenes which I'm surprised have survived all this time. The clips are silent as the original audio recordings from the location have been lost but there are subtitles to give fans an idea of what is going on. ***

We also get to see Warren Beatty model clothes for us in the wardrobe tests.

One of Penn's finest films (along with "Night Moves", "The Miracle Worker" and his underrated oddity "The Missouri Breaks"), "Bonnie and Clyde" looks terrific in a remastered deluxe DVD edition. Fans will positively love the clean up job done on the video and while the audio doesn't sound much improved, it sounds as good as it's ever going to get. Highly recommended.