Bonnie and Clyde: Critic Reviews

It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Considered New Hollywood's moment of arrival, tipping square critic Bosley Crowther into retirement (The New York Times, they were a-changin').

When I saw it, I had been a film critic for less than six months, and it was the first masterpiece I had seen on the job. I felt an exhilaration beyond describing.

It's by far the least controlled of Penn's films... but the pieces work wonderfully well, propelled by what was then a very original acting style.

This inconsistency of direction is the most obvious fault of Bonnie and Clyde, which has some good ingredients, although they are not meshed together well.

It should readily be apparent that there is something special about the production, with its brash, vivid style, indelible performances by movie icons, and bold mixture of violence and comedy, romance and tragedy.

Like Bonnie and Clyde themselves, the film rides off in all directions and ends up full of holes.

Goes overboard in its homage to a vicious team of bank robbers and killers.

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty deliver pitch perfect performances as Bonnie and Clyde, with characterisations that are layered and engaging. Beatty's bravado is infectious, and Dunaway's abandon is life affirming - if doomed.

Those returning to Bonnie and Clyde with this well-deserved special edition could well be shocked by how, well, shocking it is.

Stylistically, Arthur Penn's crime epic doesn't do anything that hadn't already been seen in any number of runty, skuzzy teen epics, all of which firmly established the paragons of good (i.e. "The Law") as being the new antagonists.

A bona fide landmark in American film, Bonnie and Clyde stands the test of time the same way its protagonists did: by breaking all the rules. [Blu-Ray]

In spite of the technological advances of film in the modern age, the blood soaked finale remains one of the most extraordinarily shot closers ever filmed...

Modern crime classic directed by Arthur Penn w/Beatty, Dunaway

Funny and violent, knowing and chilling, this is the template that no lovers-on-the-lam movies has ever bettered.

Proof that the 1960s ended with a bang. For many, the film of the decade.

...whizzes by in a compact 111 minutes, while carrying an image of people and places that is hard to forget.

Beatty's slo-mo rolling across the gravel, a muzzle flashing in his hand, is more real to us than Clyde slumped behind the wheel, dead before he realized he was ambushed

Arguably the most influential film of the late 60s, Arthur Penn's innovative crime saga forever changed the course of American cinema, particularly in the controversial areas of sex and violence and the link between them.

Freed from the production code that drove most of the old Warner Brothers gangster films of the 1930s and 40s, Arthur Penn gave Bonnie and Clyde a new kind of thrilling glee.

Dated in some ways, still shocking and powerful in others.

With its weird landscape of dusty, derelict towns and verdant highways, stunningly shot by Burnett Guffey in muted tones of green and gold, it has the true quality of folk legend.

You'll never root for the bad guys more than you will here.