The Atlantic

<em>The Highwaymen</em> Is a Pleasant Throwback of a Movie

Netflix’s latest offering tells the story of Bonnie and Clyde from the perspective of the lawmen—played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson—who pursued and killed them.
Source: Netflix

What do you call a film that takes place too recently to be considered a Western but not recently enough to be a neo-Western? A late-period Western? A retro-neo-Western? A mid-Western?

Whichever term you prefer, feel free to attach it to the Netflix movie The Highwaymen, currently enjoying a small theatrical run and, as of Friday, streaming on the service. A tale of hard men chasing outlaws across dusty byways, it is a sturdy saga that fulfills all the obligations of the classic Western, just without the horses and six-shooters.

Following in the footsteps of such narrative inversions as John Gardner’s and Gregory Maguire’s , the—but from the perspective of the lawmen who hunted the couple across the South and Midwest and ultimately gunned them down in Louisiana.

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