Bonnie and Clyde, Movie Review Example

Bonnie and Clyde is a 1967 film that was popular among younger generations because it appealed to their need for rebellion through an updated version of star-crossed, doomed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Throughout the film, Bonnie and Clyde (Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty) are shown terrorizing communities throughout the South only to come to an untimely and violent end at the hands of law enforcement officials.  The final scene of the film is possibly one of the most impactful endings in cinema history.

The setting in this final scene is desolate and isolated.  Like many other sequences in the film, the final sequence is shot in a natural environment, which helps to establish that Bonnie and Clyde are continuously moving from one place to another and adds realism to the film.  Realism is also added to the final scene through sound; this final sequence does not use any extra sounds and relies solely on the natural sounds of insects chirping, birds singing, and leaves rustling.  Because of the natural ambiance and sound, the unexpected ambush on the couple has an even greater impact because the scene is not polluted with other sounds.

This last scene is also spectacular because of the final shootout between Bonnie and Clyde and the police.  While there are many other shootouts depicted in the film, they have been bloodless, that is until this final scene.  In this final scene, the violence is exaggerated through the extremely large amount of blood and gore; Bonnie’s white dress adds a nice contrast to the blood and helps to emphasize the gore of the sequence.

Because the violence and death of Bonnie and Clyde is unexpected and the film concludes on a sad note, this final scene is the most impactful of the entire film.  This final scene also makes a lasting impact because the implied violence that has built up throughout the film explodes onto the screen through the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde and finally brings their reign of terror to an end.