To call “The Highwaymen” revisionist — or even reactionary — would be an understatement. This retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde story is not content to posit that those two Depression-era outlaws got what they deserved when they died in a hail of bullets on a Louisiana back road. It has a sackful of bones to pick with the modern world as a whole. Violent criminals are a problem, yes, but so are movies, airplanes, car radios, women in politics, newspapers — you name it. If Grandpa Simpson could figure out how to get himself a Netflix subscription, this movie would be the whole algorithm. I’m here to say I didn’t entirely hate it.

As Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow rampage across a half-dozen states, the governor of Texas, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (Kathy Bates), is persuaded by her head law enforcement honcho, Lee Simmons (John Carroll Lynch), to bring a couple of old Texas Rangers out of retirement. The governor has disbanded the Rangers and brags about raising taxes to replace them with a more up-to-date police force. J. Edgar Hoover is doing the same thing at the federal level, and while we never see Hoover’s face we do hear him called a “high-flying sissy” by one of our heroes.

Hoover’s men are smug, citified so-and-sos in trim suits who set great store by fancy crime-fighting techniques like fingerprint analysis, wiretaps, two-way radios and aerial surveillance. The ex-Rangers, reclassified as highway patrolmen for their new mission, prefer to rely on horse sense and cowboy folk wisdom. “Outlaws and mustangs always come home,” says Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner), the older, gruffer one. He reckons that Bonnie and Clyde will circle back to the Dallas neighborhood where they grew up. He’s mostly right, but the feds and other busybodies keep getting in the way.

The plan is not to take the fugitives alive. Before he sets out in pursuit — and before he’s joined by his erstwhile partner, Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson) — Frank purchases a small arsenal at a Lubbock gun shop. Even though he’s a bit rusty on the draw, Frank is a professional, and he takes the job personally. Barrow and Parker’s slaughter of police officers enrages him, and he’s disgusted by the aura of Robin Hood chic that has gathered around them. Graffiti on a rural water tower reads “Go Bonnie and Clyde!” Young women sport berets in imitation of Bonnie’s signature look. “Coldblooded killers who are more adored than movie stars” is Lee Simmons’s assessment.