Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde, quite possibly the most overrated film of the '60s, makes its letterboxed video debut, at last rendering director Arthur Penn's wide-screen compositions faithfully — and so what? Granted, Warren Beatty is fascinatingly manic, Faye Dunaway is a looker, and the supporting cast (including Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Wilder, and Oscar winner Estelle Parsons) is terrific. But Penn's film oozes an intellectual's fashionable contempt for the characters, the once-controversial violence now seems like no big deal, and the script's central conceit (that Clyde carries a big gun because he's impotent — get it?) is either an unfunny joke or, if it's meant straight, the lamest sort of dime-store Freudianism. Cool clothes, though. C+

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