The Highwaymen (2019)

The Highwaymen (2019): written by John Fusco; directed by John Lee Hancock; starring Kevin Costner (Frank Hamer), Woody Harrelson (Maney Gault), Kathy Bates (Ma Ferguson), and John Carroll Lynch (Lee Simmons): 

It's 1934 and Bonnie and Clyde cut a swath through Texas law enforcement. Enter retired Texas Rangers Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, tasked with trying to bring the homicidal gang to justice. 

At their ages, Harrelson and Costner play off one another beautifully as what are basically old gunslingers on one last hunt. The landscapes are beautifully shot. There's also a nicely under-stated, droll sense of humour to some of the proceedings. But there are also moments of horror, just as there were in real life. 

As in Arthur Penn's landmark 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde, this film plays fast and loose with a few historical facts, though fewer than Penn's film, which romanticized the dangerous duo. Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, and William Sadler offer strong support as secondary characters. Some may find this overlong; I found it elegiac. Recommended.

There Is Strength In A Union

On the Ropes: written by James Vance; illustrated by Dan Burr (2014): The late-1980's graphic novel Kings in Disguise was also written by James Vance and illustrated by Dan Burr. It was an unapologetically Steinbeckian work set during the Great Depression in the United States. Realism and melodrama combined in that graphic novel to make for one of the lesser-known great graphic novels ever produced in the medium. 

It took about a quarter of a century, but Vance and Burr return here to the Great Depression, and to the youthful protagonist of Kings in Disguise, the now-17-year-old Fred Bloch. And it's great to have them all back.

The main narrative takes place in 1937, though Bloch narrates the events from an undisclosed but seemingly distant future time and there are also copious flashbacks. Fred Bloch now travels through the American Midwest with a carnival funded by FDR's federal Work Projects Administration to provide both work and entertainment in Depression-era America. 

Across the country, workers are unionizing. And across the country, businesses are hiring people to break up strikes, unions, and attempts to unionize, often by any means necessary up to and including murder. That last part isn't melodrama -- violence and even murder was often a tool used by businesses and the State against unions in 19th- and early 20th-century America. The Pinkerton Agency, for example, was at least as well-known during that time for its union-busting activities as it was for anything remotely resembling detective work.

Fred works for an escape artist with a tragic past, romances a fellow young carnival worker, gets a WPA-funded reporter interested in labour's battles with Big Business, and covertly helps organized labour by acting as a 're-transmitter' of union communications through the post. Mail was often intercepted if it were believed to be union-related (yes, this is also historical fact and not melodrama), so Fred's help is invaluable so long as he remains the unknown link in a chain of communication. Unfortunately, two murderous thugs hired by a steel company are on his trail. And one of them has a history with Fred's escape artist.

Vance's writing is solid, involving, and certainly heartfelt. If the climax of the story strikes me as being melodramatic -- well, it is sometimes nice to see a battle between good and evil in a graphic novel that doesn't involve bright costumes or muscular hyper-competence. Fred, navigating now more intellectually between the problems of the mundane world and the communal aspirations of socialism, remains a finely drawn and sympathetic character. 

Burr's art suits the material perfectly -- it's nicely rendered, skilfully laid out, and refreshingly normative in its depiction of the Depression era and all its characters, good or bad or humanly in the middle. Like Kings in Disguise, On the Ropes is work of admirable and quietly beautiful craftsmanship. Highly recommended.

God's President

Gabriel Over the White House: written by Carey Wilson and Bertram Bloch, based on the novel Rinehard by T.F. Tweed; directed by Gregory La Cava; starring Walter Huston (President Jud Hammond), Karen Morley (Pendola 'Pendie' Molloy), Franchot Tone (Hartley 'Beek' Beekman), C. Henry Gordon (Nick Diamond) and David Landau (John Bronson) (1933): 

Made by William Randolph Heart's production company in 1932, this movie was held back by its Hollywood distributor until March 1933 because the studio head, Louis B. Mayer, was a staunch Republican who didn't want this movie released during Herbert Hoover's presidency. It's certainly one of the oddest movies of the 1930's, a paean to fascism and socialism in the service of the Greater Good.

Walter Huston plays Jud Hammond, a corrupt President who does whatever big money and the leaders of his (unnamed) political party tell him to do. But then he gets in a car accident and, instead of dying, emerges from his coma as Super-President!

After firing everyone in his Cabinet except his personal secretary "Beek" Beekman and his former lover Pendula (!) Molloy, Hammond leaps into action to save America from despair, starvation, civil unrest, and organized crime. He declares martial law, making himself the de facto emperor of America, and then puts all the unemployed men to work in his new peacetime army of the unemployed. Soon, the President has opened up all manner of cans of whoop-ass on the forces of evil in this world.

Does the newly energized President have enemies? Sure. But he's also got help. Angelic help. Though we never see the archangel Gabriel, the movie makes it pretty clear that the President has divine help in his campaign to save America and, indeed, the world. Apparently, God is a socialist with fascist tendencies. Who knew?

Huston. always a fine actor (father of John Huston, grandfather of Anjelica) makes a convincing President here under the circumstances -- indeed his acting is finer and subtler than the film itself. Huston makes Hammond slightly off-kilter while he's possessed by Gabriel (or getting advice from him, or whatever's going on) -- he really does seem to be receiving direction from outside his body, direction only he can hear. The rest of the cast is liveable, with a young Franchot Tone solid as idealistic secretary Beekman. All this in less than 90 minutes!!! Recommended.