The story of Bonnie and Clyde has been told many times, many ways and, pardon the pun, to death.
But you've never seen it told the way Netflix 's The Highwaymen has chosen to tell it after it all it's tag line is "the untold story".
For a long time, Bonnie and Clyde have been glamorised, their horrendous crimes given a gloss to them.
This celebrity-like status thrust upon them isn't new. Even as they carried out their crimes people revered them.
Women dressed like Parker and saw it as some sort of romantic Robin Hood story despite their kill count.
The pair's crime spree came to an end on May 23, 1934, when a former Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer, ambushed and killed them with a 130 shotgun, pistol, and automatic rifle.
You rarely hear about Hamer though.
The Highwaymen review: Untold true story of Bonnie and Clyde gives Frank Hamer his due
Instead, pop culture, films, and songs - Beyonce and Jay Z even sang about them - sensationalise and celebrate the criminals.
The famous Bonnie and Clyde film in 1967 portrays Hamer as a bit of a fool out for revenge after the duo humiliated him when they first met.
"Frank Hamer was not the mustache-twirling evil buffoon portrayed in Bonnie and Clyde. He was arguably the greatest law officer of the 20th century," Josh Fusco told USA Today .
Hamer's family were said to be "devastated" by his portrayal as this "buffoonish villain", using the word "humiliated" in court documents.
True story of The Highwaymen
In real-life Hammer was a force to be reckoned with and he never met the crime duo until the day he ambushed them.
Netflix's The Highwaymen switches the story up, retelling it from Hamer's side giving us an untold true story of Bonnie and Clyde's downfall.
“When you’re doing a historical piece, sometimes you might do something that kind of dramatizes the greater truth,” director John Lee Hancock said in a featurette. “So we’re reducing a 100 days of actual history into two hours, so sometimes you combine things, but you also have to be dramatic and you have to entertain. So I think you want to be as true as you can to the story and as true as you can to history, and make it as historically correct as you can.”
Fusco tracked down Hamer to tell his story and spoke to his son Frank Hamer Jr. to make sure they corrected the wrongs done to him. It's taken 15 years to get it just right.
The Highwaymen, as a result, is more accurate than a lot of adaptations that have come before it.
It shows Hamer (Kevin Costner) and his ex-partner Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) team back up to take down the notorious gangsters in the film, aged and a bit long in the tooth.
It's not really a spoiler to say we know how this went down, Bonnie and Clyde were eventually caught and killed, but this isn't really about how it ends, it's about how it happened.
True story of Bonnie and Clyde
The true story of the pair's demise really begins when Barrow Gang member Raymond Hamilton was broken out of Eastham Prison with four other inmates, one being Henry Methvin, who then joined the gang.
They broke out using guns smuggled into prison under a fence by Barrow just days before.
In the escape two guards were shot - one was fatally wounded. Parker waited in the getaway car.
The 'Eastham Breakout' was the straw that broke the camel's back. Texas law enforcement had now had enough of Barrow, Parker and the gang.
The crew had already carried out robberies, murders, shootouts against police and heists aplenty since 1932 travelling everywhere from Louisiana to Minnesota leaving destruction in their wake.
Finally, with the go-ahead from Texas Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, played by Kathy Bates in the film, the general manager of the Texas Prison Systems called up old Hamer to come out of retirement to take them down.
According to American History, he told him “to put Clyde and Bonnie on the spot and then shoot everyone in sight.”
The deal was Hamer could have whatever he wanted of the gang's possessions as payment.
Who was Frank Hamer?
Francis Hamer was a Texas Ranger and arguably one of the best lawmen of the 20th century.
He was infamous for exposing a murder ring in 1928 called the "bankers' murder machine".
He wasn't afraid of calling out his own - the group was ordered by the Texas police to collect $5,000 rewards from the Texas Bankers' Association by killing and framing criminals.
They'd ask for "dead bank robbers - not one cent for live ones."
He retired after almost 27 years just before Ma Ferguson took over leading to 40 rangers resigning rather than work for her.
Easter Sunday Murder
While the law had tried to catch up with Bonnie and Clyde for a while they always eluded them.
The public wasn't any help, treating them like celebrities. Then two Texas Highway Patrol officers were murdered in cold blood.
Finally, the public was starting to lose their hero worship for the pair.
An eyewitness said Parker executed one officer while drunk laughing as she killed him. While this was discredited later it's included, at least a version of it, in The Highwaymen.
In actuality, it was Barrow and Methvin who killed the officers, but Hamer blamed Parker for the killings - even after the ambush.
The ambush: How did Bonnie and Clyde really die?
Hamer did finally catch up with Bonnie and Clyde, after tracking them down and waiting for his moment.
That moment came in March 1934 when Methvin's family spoke to Sheriff Henderson Jordan in Louisiana.
Methvin agreed to set Bonnie and Clyde up if the state of Texas pardoned him. They agreed and things were set in motion.
On May 21, Methvin left Barrow and Parker telling them he'd later meet them at his parents' home.
Hamer, Gault and the Sheriff deputies Bob Alcorn and Ted Hinton along with Sheriff Jordan and his deputy Prentiss Oakley lay in wait.
The group set up watch on the side of the road that led towards the Methvin family home.
The events that followed have been revised, retold and changed over time.
Each of the six shooters gave widely different accounts of the final ambush and Bonnie and Clyde's death.
The one The Highwaymen chooses to go with is true to the location, it's the same as the real ambush, but it uses bits from different accounts.
The one fact everyone agreed on was Deputy Oakley fired the first shot, killing Barrow instantly with a bullet to the head.
The two deputy sheriffs gave their account as follows:
“There must have been a signal given, but who it came from is another thing. We just all acted together, stepped out into the road and raised our guns. We all yelled ‘Halt!’ at once. They didn't halt. The car was going slowly and Clyde let go of the wheel.
"We could see him grab at a gun in his lap. Bonnie was going for something on the other side. Then all hell broke loose. There were six men shooting at once.
"Machine guns? No, thank God. We had shotguns and Browning automatics… You couldn't hear any one shot. It was just a roar, a continuous roar, and it kept up for several minutes. We emptied our guns, reloaded and kept shooting. No chances with Clyde and Bonnie.”
Whether there was actually a warning given is unclear. Some of the shooters say no warning was given, the others argue who gave the warning.
Hamer claimed it wasn't a case of a shoot first, ask later.
"They did with their gun in their hands," he said, implying they shot back.
Either way, Barrow and Parker died with several shots to the head and their car was bullet-ridden.
Inside the car, Hamer and the group found "an arsenal on wheels" with automatic rifles, sawed-off shotguns, 10 pistols and 5000 rounds of ammunition.
Hamer took what he was owed, all the weapons as well as their fishing gear.
The rest of the Barrow Gang were rounded up eventually and arrested.
Methvin was pardoned as promised but then sentenced for murder in Oklahoma. He was paroled in 1942 and eventually died after passing out drink on train tracks.
Hamer clearly wasn't a man ready to retire, he became a striker breaker for oil companies and shipping interests dying in 1955.
His story became twisted and warped so far from reality he was seen as that baffoon in the 1967 movie.
The Highwaymen at least gives him back his dignity, telling a much more accurate story and restoring his legendary status.
