Is Frank Hamer Ready For His Close-up?

One badass posse. Frank Hamer, bottom right, led the posse that finished off Bonnie and Clyde, a pair of vicious punks undeserving of their posthumous glamor. Manny Gault stands behind Hamer.

The moccasin telegraph — actually Deadline.com — is abuzz with word that the legendary Texas lawman Frank Hamer may finally be getting his close-up.

Hamer led the posse that ambushed and gunned down Bonnie and Clyde. It was only one of a passel of exploits for Hamer, who may just have been the most badass lawman the nation ever produced. If you don’t believe me, pick up John Boessenecker’s fine biography, released in 2016.

Sources said Netflix is in early discussions to team Woody Harrelson and Kevin Costner as the lawmen who hunted down Depression Era outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, with John Lee Hancock directing. To do this, Netflix is negotiating to extricate the project from Universal Pictures, where it was originally set four years ago.

Costner would play legendary lawman Frank Hamer and Harrelson would play Manny Gault. They were out of the Rangers by the time Bonnie & Clyde started their robbery reign, but were commissioned as special investigators, coaxed by a consortium of banks to assemble a posse and end the robbery spree of the notorious gang reputed to have killed 13 cops and others. The details are different than the version depicted in the 1967 Arthur Penn-directed Bonnie and Clyde, which starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway… Highwaymen takes the vantage point of the formidable posse headed by Hamer, an old style Texas Ranger who’d survived 100 gunfights and killed 53 people. 

There was a time when I would have scoffed at the idea of Kevin Costner playing Frank Hamer, but after his bravura performance as Devil Anse Hatfield in History Channel’s Hatfields & McCoys (for which he also wrote and performed some truly outstanding music) I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The man has developed some gravitas late in his career.

It’s high time that Hamer became the focus of this story. Bonnie and Clyde are, truth-to-tell, not all that interesting. And the portrayals of Hamer in “their” movies have ranged from scurrilous to bland. He deserves a telling worthy of the all-time badass that he was. Bad as they git, in Manse Lipscomb’s words.

Frank Hamer, Texas Ranger. Bad as they git.