If you are in to gun history....

[GAHUNTER60]

....and want to see a pretty good movie, watch "The Highwaymen" on Netflix. I just watched it tonight, and was pleasantly surprised at the historical accuracy of guns used by Bonnie and Clyde and Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the lawman who ultimately brought them to justice.

In it, they note that Clyde Barrow used a BAR he obtained from a raid on a National Guard Armory in Iowa. They also show Bonnie Parker finishing off two wounded LEOs with her sawed off 20-gauge shotgun.

As for Hamer, he used a variety of guns in his pursuit of the two outlaws, including a Thompson Sub machinegun, a BAR, a Winchester .30-30 and the gun he ultimately used to kill Bonnie and Clyde, a Remington Model 8 semi-automatic rifle in .35 Remington (I have one just like the one in the movie). What they don't show in the movie is that Hamer had his Model 8 customized to take a 20-round removable magazine, which was an option offered to lawmen in that era.

Obviously, The Highwaymen is the story Frank Hamer's pursuit of the two outlaws, but as opposed to the 1967 version of the story starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, Bonnie and Clyde are accurately portrayed as the cold-blooded killers they actually were. Even though they had a popular following at the time, the movie pulled no punches as to their true nature.

It was kinda nice to see a historical drama try to stick to the facts as they really happened, with is a rarity in Hollywood these days.

 

[pacecars]

Saw it and liked it. They of course took a little artistic license with the story. The gun store scene was great but never happened. Overall though it was a great movie

 

[Dub]

Yup.

Saw the movie soon after it released on Netflix. Really enjoyed it. Was actually thinking about watching it again sometime this week.

 

[Cmp1]

Good movie,,,,

 

[godogs57]

Another cool aspect of that movie was the ambush scene at the end. It was filmed right where it actually happened. On our way out west this past fall we took a detour off the interstate and visited the site. its just a few miles off the interstate but in the middle of nowhere. It’s a nondescript two lane road now but back then it was a single lane dirt road. The movie crew had to haul in loads of dirt to cover the asphalt and bring in trees and brush to narrow the road bed for authenticity. The historical aspect of this site is off the scale when visiting it....left you with goose bumps.

 

[Cmp1]

Watched it again yesterday,,,,

 

[Ruger#3]

I’ve watched it several times, good movie. It is some of Harrelson’s best work.

 

[godogs57]

Here's the actual ambush site. Pics taken as wife and I were headed to NM to elk hunt. Note that the road was much more narrow back then. When you are watching the Highway Men these pics show the same scene when Bonnie and Clyde were riding up to their ambush. The producers mentioned in an interview that the ambush site in the movie was the actual site.

Here is the marker. They were actually shot across the road/pig trail.



Here is the road they were on....in the movie they spot Bonnie and Clyde coming around that bend...exactly as it happened:



Same spot just after the ambush. This pic is a re-creation of the ambush a couple of days later.



This is the exact spot where Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and his posse were waiting to ambush Bonnie and Clyde; just inside the trees over my rear view mirror. This is directly across the road from the historical markers shown in my first pic. After they were killed, Clyde's foot slipped off the car's brake and it rolled downhill to the right side of this photo for a short distance. I went into that little clump of bushes and scrub pines and paused for a minute to take it all in....I don't know the right words to describe my feelings other than I was very aware that I was standing right where history was made back when my mom and dad were only nine years old.

 

[Dub]

Awesome post @godogs57

Thank you for showing those pics and sharing your experiences there. Cool stuff.

 

[GunnSmokeer]

Many accounts of the Bonnie & Clyde ambush and death mention that law-enforcement officers had a "Colt Monitor" gun. Rarely does anybody explain what this is. Writers and filmmakers today in our generation should not assume that the public would know what kind of gun this is.

I looked it up years ago --it's a special production run of the BAR, the Browning Automatic Rifle made at the end of World War I and famously used in World War II and Korea. The monitor was made specifically for the peacetime law-enforcement market.

Fully automatic rifle, .30-06 caliber, long barrel, with a slotted recoil compensator at the end.
Used 20-round box magazines.
Had a slow cyclic rate as far as machine guns go – only about 500 rounds per minute.