Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

"Bonnie and Clyde," released in 1967, is one of the best movies of the 20th century, and perhaps one of the greatest movies of all time. Directed by Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway star in a romanticized account of the real-life pair of bank-robbing outlaw lovers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who set off a reign of terror throughout the American Midwest during the 1930s. The Depression was still fresh on everyone's mind and Bonnie and Clyde new that, finding out the hard way the toll it was taking on Americans as it did prove to be a hassle for them when they robbed banks. I thought it was especially generous that Clyde decides to let a farmer keep his money while they rob one bank, and then a montage following the scene shows the people who witnessed it as being happy and whimsical and proud that they were in a bank that was stuck up by the Barrow Gang. Beatty and Dunaway are fantastic and convincing as the doomed lovers on the run, as are the film's supporting players including Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, and Michael J. Pollard. The film's violence is also pretty effective too, being that when people get shot, they bleed - profusely, realistically - and "Bonnie and Clyde" also helped to lay out the groundwork for Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" two years down the road in 1969. And everyone knows about the film's ending, which is one of the bloodiest death scenes ever filmed, and how a storm of bullets ushered both Bonnie and Clyde into American and cinematic history, and the poem Bonnie Parker sent to the newspaper that eerily foreshadowed their brutal demise. Of course, by this time we've come to really sympathize with the two outlaws, and this is what makes their deaths all the more shocking. A true historic and cinematic landmark masterpiece; "Bonnie and Clyde" is timeless.

10/10