Summary
We see a man, Eugene, and a woman, Velma, canoodling on a porch, when suddenly they notice that the Barrow gang is stealing Eugene's car. They get in another car and chase the Barrow gang, and Eugene talks about how he's gonna tear those kids apart. When Velma warns him that they might have guns, he reconsiders, and they turn around to go the police. Seeing that Eugene and Velma have turned around, Clyde decides to turn around also and chase the couple.
When they notice that they're being followed, Eugene gets very nervous and urges Velma to "step on it!" The Barrow gang pulls up alongside Eugene and Velma and forces them off the road. The group goes over to the car and begins teasing the couple, kissing the windows and trying to intimidate them, before telling them to get out and get in their car with them.
After they've crowded into Eugene's car, the gang introduces themselves. Bonnie notices how nervous they look and comforts them: "Don't be scared! It's not like you're the law! You're just regular folks, like us." When the Barrow gang ask the couple if they've read about them in the papers, Eugene says they have, but Velma says they haven't. Buck holds up his rifle and asks Eugene when he plans to marry Velma, laughing at his little practical joke.
As the car ride goes on, Buck tells Eugene and Velma a funny story, which makes them laugh hysterically and wins them over. Eugene tells the group that he's originally from Wisconsin, "where the cheese come from," and when Bonnie asks Velma her age, she answers "33," which seems to shock Eugene.
Later that night, the group eats takeout food in the car, and Eugene says that he has the wrong hamburger, that he ordered his well done. Moss hands him his hamburger, which he has already taken some bites of, but Eugene doesn't want it. "You're a grand host, Buck," says Eugene laughing, and Clyde jokes that the couple should join the gang. When Bonnie asks Eugene what he does, he tells her that he's an undertaker. Her face falls and she tells Clyde to pull over and kick the couple out. They leave Eugene and Velma on the side of the road and drive away.
The scene shifts to the next day and we see the group searching for Bonnie. Suddenly, Clyde spots her in a cornfield and goes running towards her. She runs away from him as he chases her, before falling onto the ground. "I want to see my mama," she says, sadly, as Clyde tells her not to leave him without saying goodbye. Bonnie pleads with Clyde that her mother's getting old and she wants to go and see her, and Clyde agrees that they'll go visit, hugging her close in the middle of the cornfield.
We see Bonnie's mother. Then we see Bonnie reunited with her friends from home as they tell her they've cut out every article about her and introduce her to their children. A boy rolls down a nearby hill and Bonnie goes to hug her mother. A small group says a prayer together as Clyde and the others play with the children from the town. A man asks Clyde where they're headed and he jokes that they're just running from the law.
Bonnie goes to her mother and gives her an expensive necklace. "Clyde, I read about you all in the papers, and I just get scared," says Mrs. Parker, and Clyde tells her not to believe the newspaper, assuring her that they will run away from the law and escape. "I ain't gonna risk my little girl just to make a little money, as uncertain as times are," says Clyde as Mrs. Parker stares at him stoically. She abruptly walks away, unconvinced, and Clyde tries to assure her that they're going to settle down and live only 3 miles away from her soon enough. Shaking her head, Mrs. Parker encourages them to keep running from the law, not settle down at all. She hugs Bonnie, wishes her goodbye, and walks away.
The next day, Buck looks at a tattoo on Moss's chest in a hotel room in Iowa. After they play some pranks, Bonnie snaps at them and tells them to go back to their own cabin. Clyde suggests they go to a chicken place for dinner, and the group leaves, Buck telling Blanche to pick him up some peach ice cream.
Bonnie tells Clyde she has "the blues so bad" after visiting her mother. "I don't have no mama, no family either," says Bonnie, crying, and Clyde tells her he's her family. Curling up in a ball, Bonnie tells Clyde she thought they were "really going somewhere," but now she sees that "this is it."
Moss and Blanche drive to go get dinner, and Moss notes that Blanche has been smoking a lot recently. "So what?" she says defensively, before throwing her cigarette out the window. When Moss asks Blanche why she doesn't just go to her Baptist preacher father's house, she begins to cry about how she's ended up where she is. She tells Moss that her father loved Buck, even though Buck was serving time when she was first seeing him. "We're disciples of Christ," says Moss, trying to comfort her.
At the restaurant, a cowboy notices the gun in Moss's waistband and his eyes widen. As Blanche pays for the chicken dinners and she and Moss leave, the cowboy follows them outside and calls the sheriff.
Back at the hotel, Bonnie and Clyde get ready for bed. A cop starts knocking on Blanche and Buck's door, and as Buck grabs his rifle, Blanche covers his mouth and yells to the cop that they should go to the other side. A fleet of cop cars pulls up outside the hotel, ready to apprehend the criminals. Suddenly they begin shooting at the hotel, breaking the windows. A shootout begins, and Bonnie and Clyde shoot their own machine guns at the cop cars, killing some cops.
The cops shoot Buck in the head, and Clyde and Bonnie come out of the garage to collect him. Blanche gets shot in the eye as they try to drive away, and they pick up Moss a little ways out. Some distance from the hotel, Moss hops out and steals a car and they continue on. Behind the wheel, Moss cries. In the original car, Blanche sobs hysterically over Buck, who is badly wounded.
Eventually, they take Buck out of the car and Blanche begins sobbing about his condition. Bonnie puts a bandage on her as she sobs. Buck calls out to Blanche, eventually dying in his brother's arms.
Analysis
Bonnie and Clyde's hatred of anyone who represents "the law" gives them a skewed vision of the world. When they pick up Eugene and Velma, Bonnie tries to comfort the nervous couple by suggesting that they're all just regular folks, and that they're all the same. This is untrue, of course, as the Barrow gang is a rowdy group of criminals and Velma and Eugene are law-abiding citizens. Bonnie and Clyde imagine that they are connected to the rest of the world by their disrespect for the law and their belief that institutions are unjust, and it is their belief in their own anarchic sense of justice that makes them such notorious criminals.
The film maintains a lighthearted tone even in its darker moments. For instance, Eugene is played by the iconic comedic actor Gene Wilder, who brings to his part a manic and excitable quality that is often quite comic. One minute he is yelling and threatening, and the next he is taking everything he said back, stammering and stuttering in fear. Thus, Eugene's fear is made all the more vivid by Wilder's rambunctious characterization, and we are able to see the average civilian's terrified response to the rowdy protagonists at first.
Bonnie, Clyde, and the others are cold-blooded murderers and criminals, but the film also portrays them as three-dimensional people, misguided and lost youths, childless parents who have gone astray. In this way, Bonnie's claim that they are just "regular folks" isn't so far off, and we can see the ways that the criminals are kids who've run off course in their lives. The Barrow gang is not made up of sociopathic schemers or sadistic types, but seems more like a gang of friends who like to party together, break the rules, and have a good time. They even manage to get the frightened Velma and Eugene on their side in a matter of hours. It makes sense that the story of the bank robbers was narrativized in such a way in 1967 when the film was made, as social mores were changing and youth culture was becoming more inhibited and rebellious.
As lighthearted as the film can be, the threat of death is never far behind. When Bonnie finds out that Eugene is an undertaker, she has Clyde throw the couple out of the car, upset to be reminded of the fact that they are getting dangerously close to getting themselves killed. Suddenly, the fun and games of the life of crime is put in perspective and the jubilant fun they're having doesn't seem so joyful anymore when the thought of death returns, reminding Bonnie of how deeply she has become entrenched in an irreversible life of crime.
Tragedy indeed catches up to the Barrow gang when they stop at a hotel after visiting Bonnie's mother. When a cowboy recognizes Blanche and Moss at a restaurant, he sends a heavily armed squadron of cops to apprehend them, which culminates in a deadly, bloody shootout. The fun and games of the group dynamic, the youthful mischief of the bank robberies, is long gone and is replaced with horrible violence and grief once the cops show up. The group of young adults face horrible existential realities, as they resist the consequence of their crimes.
