Thomasine & Bushrod

• Directed by Gordon Parks Jr.
• April 10, 1974

Two people after rekindling their old romance take to robbing banks while stealing from rich whites and sharing the bounty with the poor on the American Frontier.

Sometimes you watch a movie and there is a lot to say even though it was just 90 minutes. It is from start to finish packed with…something. This was not. When the distance of time set in I could remember much about the story making it ultimately forgettable. There is not much to say about this. Nothing stands out. Nothing resonates. They had a grab bag of random costumes and props and decided to do their best to set it around the early 1900s. What they do have and use makes it feel like a Western. The gravely voiced George Murdock plays US Marshal Bogardie who dresses like he is straight out of a 50s Western. Feel is not enough.

Thomasine & Bushrod was designed to be a companion/parallel to Bonnie and Clyde but comes off more like a weak imitation. That creates problems with the ending. If you know how Bonnie and Clyde ended then you know how this ends. It doesn’t surprise you. It doesn’t excite and it doesn’t feel tragically romantic.

The romance between J.P. Bushrod (Max Julien) and Thomasine (Vonetta McGee) is supposed to be the meat of the story. While the actors were a couple in real life they have absolutely no screen chemistry. They are supposed to be the linchpin upon which everything else revolves. There is no displayed attraction. They like each other but liking each other and being in love are different. 

Director Gordon Parks Jr. and pals certainly push trying to make Bushrod and Thomasine into Robin Hood types with Bogardie as the chief villain. Bogardie spends most of the time growling and snarling but being more incidental than a pursuer.

Bushrod and Thomasine have a mutual friend named Jomo (Glynn Turman) who is Jamaican because why not? He just happens to show up at the right time when they’re involved in a robbery. I don’t even think they were expecting to meet him. It felt like an abrupt curveball to expand this very small cast. He was meant as a more casual-to-crime character but was just an ill fit.

Thomasine & Bushrod I shrugged at. I don’t feel like I wasted my life here but it won’t be something I’ll ever go back to again. I don’t think you should even try.