This was a made for TV mini-series that debuted on the History Channel a few weeks ago. This is my take on it. First off I recognized someone from the film. The part of Bonnie was being played by the very beautiful Holliday Grainger, from the Showtime hit series “The Borgias”. She looks a little bit different here with brown hair instead of blonde. She has a sort of cute little bit pudgy face that is unique to her. Clyde was being played by Emile Hirsch, from “Into the Wild” fame.
This is a two-part series and to tell the truth, I was dreading watching it. I had extremely low expectations going in being that it was a History Channel original. After viewing the first part I can say I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it. I attribute it to good writing. Even though it was made for TV, it has enough foul language in it, that if it were a movie, it probably would have been rated “R“, and I haven’t even touched on the violence. I’ll save those details for part two.
Part two as expected was much more violent. It revealed Bonnie to be very callous and pretty much a lost soul. Really they both were. It depicted Clyde as having more humanity and empathy, killing only when deemed necessary not just for the fun of it. Also what came across loud and clear was just how ridiculous their story was, if this was an accurate depiction. I mean the number of situations they got themselves out of and the number of near captures was crazy. Also, this film pretty much showed Clyde to be a light sleeper and had near clairvoyant episodes allowing them to elude capture several times. Even at the end, they showed him telling Bonnie how much he loved her right before getting blasted out of this world. I understand this was purely the writing, but it did give me something to think about. The series as a whole did capture the era as I was transported back to that time period. I think this is the best TV mini-series I’ve seen this year. Highly recommended.
*****
