“The Highwaymen” is a film from John Lee Hancock, featured on Netflix, and starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. The retelling of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde story aims its focus on the Texas Rangers who ended the outlaw pair’s crime spree in 1934, following an intense manhunt. Harrelson plays Maney Gault, a former partner to Costner’s character, Frank Hamer, a retired Ranger. Together, they boldly pick up the task of pursuing the fugitives following the FBI’s failure to catch Parker and Barrow. In the process, we see great Texas footage of a phenomenal story set in the Lone Star State, with a Texas star in a leading role.
Born in Midland, Texas, in 1961, Harrelson’s childhood was marked with a drama all its own. His father was given a life sentence in 1979 as a convicted hitman. The actor stated that his father was rarely present for his upbringing, and even less so after that. Charles Harrelson passed away in prison in 2007. In the meantime, Woody and his siblings were raised by a single mother on a secretary’s salary. They moved to Ohio, where Harrelson attended high school, and then he went on to attend Hanover College in Indiana, where he earned a BA in Theater and English in 1983. His big acting break came in 1985, in the role of Woody Boyd, a young, well-meaning bartender in the “Cheers” sitcom. Since then, he’s played a number of notable roles in the film industry, most recently garnering one of the leads in “The Highwaymen.” If anyone has the versatile ability to bring to life both a naïve mid-western beer-slinging lad who moves to Beantown and also, on the other end of the spectrum, a steely-nerved Texas Ranger in hot pursuit of men/women at large, it’s Harrelson.