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Inside Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson’s Bromance in ‘The Highwaymen’

March 28, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

I never envisioned Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as the stuff of bromance, two great tastes that go great together like chocolate and peanut butter or rum and coke. But, in Netflix’s new movie The Highwaymen that premiered at SXSW over the weekend, and will begin to stream on March 29th, the manly movie stars get bromantic as retired Texas Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault who tick off the miles together in a cherry vintage sedan in pursuit of lover law-breakers Bonnie and Clyde.

The Highwaymen rides in on a well-worn track – as the miles increase on the odometer, the friendship takes shape and the men sitting side-by-side discover through a mutual goal that they have more in common than they might have believed during the opening credits. The road bromance has long been a Hollywood staple – and it appears ageless. (And is good for maturing talent: Costner is 64; Harrelson is 57).

The genre doubles the star power of a movie to give it a four-fisted box office boost, or expand the audience reach like a marketing Venn diagram. One recent example is Green Book, which took a critical beating on its way to its crowd-pleasing Best Picture Oscar by serving up Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali packed together in a 1962 Cadillac deVille driving through the hostile South.

Among my favorite vintage road-mances are Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in Road to Morocco and many other roads traveled, Robert Redford and Paul Newman relying on literal horsepower in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the pairing of grumpy bounty hunter Robert DeNiro and prissy mob accountant Charles Grodin putting each other through hilarious hell on a transcontinental train ride in Midnight Run.

Or take Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who famously despised each other off-screen, making sweet movie music together in Hollywood or Bust – a movie where Federico Fellini’s sex goddess Anita Ekberg was only a blip between the two male leads.

Great on-screen chemistry between two men is the same genie in a bottle that characterizes a romantic spark. The arc is often one of mutual estrangement if not outright dislike or distrust, followed by a series of trials that test and ultimately strengthen the pair’s bond, and then an acknowledgement that there’s mutual dependence if not outright affection.

Unlike romance, this connection is rarely sealed by a kiss but by a grudging gesture, as it is on the side of that dusty long Texas road at the end of The Highwaymen (no need for spoilers here). Mush is for chick flicks.

And, in the case of The Highwayman, so is direct eye contact. Keep your eyes on the road, dude.

The chemistry works for Costner and Harrelson because in many ways they are actors of contrasting talents.

Still square-jawed handsome if a little stockier, Costner has built a career largely, though not entirely, on leading men parts like Hamer – personified as G-man Eliot Ness in The Untouchables on the hunt for Al Capone, or as the loyal defender at Whitney Houston’s side in The Bodyguard.

Costner is the epitome of the stoic American leading man in the Gary Cooper/Gregory Peck vein, born to play the pack’s strong-but-silent alpha dog. And age has not dimmed this, even if the opportunities are fewer and far between. (Maybe Netflix will fix that).

On the other hand, Harrelson is the more volatile and unpredictable – a character actor who also plays lead. He has a penchant for drunks and thieves in movies like The Glass Castle and Natural Born Killers. But in his moving role as the embattled and terminally ill sheriff in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri he displays his talent as a powerful ensemble player capable of flying his most intimate feelings in front of the camera.

Because, in this crime drama, they both play older-and-wiser-and-slower characters, there’s an appealing mellowness to their interactions. Harrelson’s Gault is not the full-on crazy of the actor’s earlier career. And yet he’s still the gunpowder to Costner’s flint, the less stable element. His character’s volatility and emotional accessibility ultimately humanizes the stick-up-his-ass aspect to Costner’s Hamer.

That imbalance, that interaction, enables the bromantic chemistry. One doesn’t require music welling up, or a swooping crane shot, to see that these men connect, really connect. And, because they’re manly men with pistols on their hips, love means never having to explain yourself.

One element that separates bromance from romance: the protagonists need never ask that dreaded questions: How do you really feel? In this case, they just nod, spit and drive off in the same direction.

[This column first appeared on RealClearLife.com]

Movie Review: ‘The Highwaymen’

March 27, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

The Highwaymen is as dry and flat as the Texas plains where it’s set — and that’s a compliment. This is high-quality, straight-shooting filmmaking from John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side). His loping retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde legend focuses on the Texas Rangers who turned the young bank robbers into Swiss cheese in 1934 after an intense interstate man-and-woman hunt.

With Kevin Costner, 64, as retired Ranger Frank Hamer tapping his old partner Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson, 57) to boldly, if creakily, go where the FBI has failed to catch the larcenous lovers, the star wattage is high even when the tension is turned to very slow burn.

Age hasn’t dimmed Costner’s leading-man charisma. As a lawman of few words with an itch for justice, he carries the movie as if it were as light as the handkerchief he keeps using to dab the sweat from his lips. Sure, the skin is a little looser under his chin, and when he chases a young ginger boy carrying messages for the outlaws, he can’t jump the fence between them because his belly is in the way — but that only means he has to rely on his wits a bit more.

While Costner has, over his career’s course, largely played the good guy (and Hamer is certainly a variant of his Eliot Ness in The Untouchables), Harrelson is the switch hitter. From TV’s Cheers to Natural Born Killers to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Harrelson has the range to be heroic and dangerous — sometimes in the same scene. Harrelson’s lesser-known gift as an actor is his generosity. In The Highwaymen, his shambling, perfectly calibrated counterbalance to Costner’s stoicism adds layers and richness to their interactions.

Texas is as much of a character as Hamer and Gault. The vintage autos and two-toned spectator shoes are as exquisitely rendered as any in Downton Abbey. And the car chases on unpaved roads — particularly one in which Clyde Barrow (Edward Bossert) leaves the Rangers in a cloud of dust — are sharply rendered and exciting.

Making strong but small support are Kim Dickens, 53, as Hamer’s wealthy wife and Kathy Bates, 70, as Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson. As the outlaws, diminutive Emily Brobst and Bossert only have a glimpsed presence, cameos in their own crime saga. Ironically, in flipping the script on Arthur Penn’s classic 1967 beauty-and-blood fest Bonnie and Clyde, which paired Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the legendary Romeo and Juliet of outlaws, Hancock’s movie all but erases the feminine presence that made that deadly duo both infamous and celebrated.

The love story here is purely man-o a man-o, between undemonstrative lawmen Hamer and Gault as etched by the symbiotic and uniquely satisfying performances of Costner and Harrelson.

[This review originally appeared on AARP]

Reality Bite for Steven Spielberg: Netflix Isn’t the Enemy, It’s Elitism

March 17, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Steven Spielberg’s post-Oscars aggressive mobilization demanding a four-week theatrical qualifying run for a movie to be eligible for Best Picture – with his sights on Netflix – really aggravates me. And not only because I think that the streamer’s Roma is a more authentic film than Spielberg has made in the past decade.

This has been a flashpoint and continuing source of heated discussion — and tweeting — ever since Spielberg, a governor of the Academy’s directors branch, expressed his controversial intention to lobby to revise Oscars eligibility rules at the upcoming Board of Governors meeting.

After winning three Oscars for Roma, Netflix tweeted: “We love cinema. Here are some things we also love: -Access for people who can’t always afford, or live in towns without, theaters -Letting everyone, everywhere enjoy releases at the same time -Giving filmmakers more ways to share art These things are not mutually exclusive.”

Netflix doesn’t need me to defend them. They have the righteous Director Ava DuVernay, who’s also used social media to voice her view @ava: “One of the things I value about Netflix is that it distributes black work far/wide. 190 countries will get WHEN THEY SEE US. Here’s a promo for South Africa. I’ve had just one film distributed wide internationally. Not SELMA. Not WRINKLE. It was 13TH. By Netflix. That matters. https://t.co/lpn1FFSfgG”

That does matter, Ava. Moreover, it’s significant that the industry’s embedded leaders may not be getting the message. I’m mad because when Spielberg and his cronies get their boxers in a twist and mobilize within their cloistered industry they choose self-interest and self-preservation.

Why should I be surprised?

News to the three-time Oscar winner Spielberg: there is nothing sacred about a theatrical release. It’s the stories and their connection to contemporary audiences that must be nurtured. That’s where the juice is. And that’s where the potential is to make positive change.

I would really love it if these powerful Hollywood kingmakers took all their clout, Academy cred, mentorship capability and ridiculous bags of money – and channeled that energy into the most crucial issue facing their industry today: inclusion.

I’m not asking these film folks to write checks to the Democratic Party. They already do that.

Just, please, don’t squander your outrage by planting your flag on this issue of theatrical releases.

Or, as The Black List founder Franklin Leonard tweeted: “It isn’t even about Netflix, though they’re the most visible and least sympathetic target. It’s about every other film and filmmaker who will struggle to get access to the resources necessary to make a film but not get those allowing for a four week exclusive theatrical release.”

Thank you, Mr. Leonard. This is the key point. Access to the means of movie production is the central struggle of this moment.

These viewpoints in support of a new economic model lead to my central question: has Spielberg taken as aggressive a stand defending gender parity or diversity as his outspoken rebuke to Netflix? Has he worked with other honchos to, for example, amass a $100M development pool to support full budgets of new films directed by those filmmakers previously disenfranchised?

This isn’t charity. This is industry survival in a global economy. And, as the pump of cultural product that Hollywood is, this is about preserving and enhancing our position as a world power in the field of ideas at a moment when we are losing face on the international stage.

And I’m not asking Spielberg or his posse to do it as a reflection of personal magnanimity. Slough off the ego, roll up the sleeves and make change because it will cost you nothing other than money. Certainly you haven’t spent those massive movie profits simply on In –N-Out burgers.

Mr. Spielberg, if you want to save movies, I suggest you step out of your creative comfort zone and relinquish control.

This won’t be easy. He’s no longer a Young Turk but an elder statesman. And his inclination, as reflected in his prestige Oscar-bait period films, is to lionize the white savior over the oppressed minority. For example, in Schindler’s List, now celebrating its 25th Anniversary, Liam Neeson saves the Jews as the fact-based title character who rescues his factory workers from the maw of the Nazis. Ditto Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln.

What none of these dramatic serious stories does, with the exception of The Color Purple, is relinquish the central narrative arc to the so-called victims: Jews, blacks or women.

I don’t expect Spielberg the artist, whose 1975 film Jaws signaled the rise of the blockbuster and the decline of the 1970s groovy grainy films of his fellows like Sidney Lumet’s contemporaneous Dog Day Afternoon, to easily shift his focus. He has been in the industry sweet spot, often numero uno, for nearly half a century. But this is my plea.

We don’t need a savior tilting at the windmills of the past, like a silent-movie star raging in a squeaky voice at the rise of talkies. We need financing. We need mentorship and budgets.

We don’t even need big budgets.

Last year’s Oscar-winner Moonlight by Barry Jenkins had a $4M production budget. Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird was $10M. Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone the movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career, was $2M.

What would the Athena Film Festival or the Memphis Film Prize or the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival be able to accomplish with $100M to award to women of all kinds and artists of color?

That would be a game-changer, Mr. Spielberg. And maybe it’s time for us, your audience, to save you from yourself.

(This column first appeared in RealClearLife.com}

Busted: Drug-War Drama “Sicario” Strikes me as Warm MIlk after Reading “The Cartel,” watching “Narcos”

September 11, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

There Will Be Blood for Emily Blunt in “Sicario”

Thanks Don Winslow. (Said with the cadence of ‘Thanks Obama.’) You ruined Sicario for me. Your fantastic, devilishly researched novel The Cartel that James Ellroy called “The War and Peace of dopewar books.” Even before El Chapo escaped jail and the Mexican government scapegoated four policemen, you changed the entire way that I looked at the so-called war on drugs. To paraphrase “I’ve looked at drugs from both sides now,” and by using multiple narratives you made the case that the cartels aren’t something run by Mexican families south of Laredo, but an intricate web of government complicity on both sides of the border where our guys often choose what they consider to be the least of all evil drug lords in a policy that, like the War in Vietnam, has become a lose-lose proposition.

Don — may I call you Don? — by writing a book with multiple narratives, that gives humanity to everyone from the journalists in Juarez to the mistress of the El Chapo of your narrative to a child soldier born in the states and trained to become a sicario of soul-evaporating brutality, as well as American law enforcement, you created a rich and complex narrative. It’s a tale of one border with two very different sides that are as interrelated as brothers, codependent and estranged. Watching Sicario, the movie that stars Emily Blunt as a naive, or as Hollywood says, “idealistic” FBI agent, I kept wondering why she hadn’t read your book — or at least, given the grotesquely violent set pieces she heads into with her Kevlar vest and her eyes open, why she had so little clue about the invasive tentacled tumor that the cartels have become on both sides of the border crossings that they control to Midas-size profits.

For those who read my work, you’ll know that I’m all about the female-driven narrative, but Blunt’s wide-eyed and slightly lip-glossed agent is a false construct. To root for her, and her desire to fight crime by the books, is to sit on the side of American willful ignorance. And that’s not my preferred seat.

What I love about Sicario are the visceral set pieces. But when G-worman Blunt crosses the border in a plane with a mysterious federal agent (a charmingly no-bullshit Josh Brolin) and a twitchy overdressed Latino on special assignment from no branch of the U.S. government that has a payroll (Benicio Del Toro), I missed the complexity of The Cartel. Because his Juarez, not the Mexican drug jungle of the movie, had a culture of books and journalists and community. It was a real place raped and dismembered by the drug trade, a collusion of greed and violence and the American dream for escape through white powder.

The Juarez of Sicario is all backdrop for an American vision. Additionally, thanks to The Cartel, I know that the duality the movie sets up between the good federales and the corrupt local police is bullshit — the federal police are just playing on a different team, because there isn’t just one drug kingpin but many.

Sicario will shock, and Brolin and Del Toro give it grit, Blunt (as always) gives her best but, like Jessica Rabbit, her problem is that she was just drawn that way and can’t escape the sketch. But not only does it come in the wake of The Cartel, and not everybody is reading 600-page books however brilliant these days, but it also follows Netflix’s Narcos, the serial character study of Colombian drug king Pablo Escobar that I watched in great gulps until the final downward spiral. And, if you want to read a fantastic female-driven narrative of a legendary female drug chieftain, reach for the riveting Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Telemundo adapted that novel in Spanish in the wildly popular telenovela La Reina Del Sur from Telemundo.

And, Don, I don’t want to leave out the sultry but intensely lonely survivalist drug queen played by Salma Hayek in Oliver Stone’s adaptation of your novel Savages. She certainly deserves her own book — but I know you are busy, busy.

So that is my long answer as to why, while Sicario will shock some audiences (and the lovely man sitting next to me at the Toronto International Film Festival screening), it lacks authenticity. While it has the stinking dismembered bodies to give it street cred, it goes down like warm milk compared to the reality: a world where we Americans, in general, are willfully misunderstanding our co-dependent relationship with our sister to the south. As someone who grew up on the border in San Diego, and has fond memories of family visits to Tijuana and Ensenada, where life seemed so much more vibrant than the suburbs where I lived, this is a narrative I find infinitely affecting.

Like Vietnam, the War on Drugs is unwinnable — but we have to understand what its true nature is — and how many people on both sides of the border have invested their political and law enforcement careers on it. Read the headlines — and learn to read between the headlines. Follow @DonWinslow. Drug kingpin El Chapo escapes his high security prison. The Mexican government arrests four policemen who take the fall. But this is a dance and the drug cartels are paying the band with briefcases of cash. This echoes the refrain of Narcos: do you want silver or do you want lead — bribes or death. In that environment, there is no law. if you were given that choice, what would your response be? A dead with the devil or death? Think on that.