Gun Crazy (also known as Deadly is the Female) is a precursor to 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, as the story of a man and a woman who fall in love (largely over a shared love of marksmanship), and wind up running around the country robbing people at gunpoint. Inevitably, things get deadly.
Gun Crazy was another film that was hit or miss all the way through. There are some really impressive technical achievements in the film, along with several things I imagine were being done for the first time. Most notable is a really impressive single shot filmed from the back seat of a car. The shot includes our bandits driving up to a bank, the guy going inside, a cop approaching outside, the woman distracting the cop, the guy running back out of the bank, and the pair getting back in the car and starting their escape. Not too shabby.
However, while much of the filming is impressive, I wasn’t particularly engaged by the story. I never felt any chemistry or heat between the leads, nor was their ever any believable passion that led up to any of the film’s murders. The beats were all pretty flat. It was also frustrating to watch the half-assed and misguided attempts to make everything her fault, but without actually including any ambiguity or believable build of tension or feeling.
As a lover of film history, I’m supposed to love this movie. I didn’t. Maybe I need to find a bonafide film historian to start watching movies with me.
