A battered car carries two bruised brothers, Toby and Tanner Howard (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) across a desolate post-industrial borderland. Passing billboards advertising debt relief and loans, they make their way to the bank. It's the first of many they will rob at gunpoint. On their tail is Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), three months from retirement and looking for a hobby. What better way to pass the time than guessing the Howard brothers' next move? He's joined by his partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham), and together they will chase Toby and Tanner, all the while wondering why the youngsters would want to steal cash when their family is sitting on an oilfield. Could the motivation go beyond simple greed?
Hell or High Water is the ninth feature from director David Mackenzie, and it follows his excellent prison drama Starred Up. As with that film, ostensibly there's little here we've not seen before, but it's pulled off with such confidence and control that it seems effortless, making for an effortless watch.
For a film about post-9/11 shattered ideals it's a very accessible and humorous package. Taylor "Sicario" Sheridan's script is surprisingly banter-filled and funny, to the point where one could argue the emotional impact of the climax is somewhat undermined. Indeed, the final confrontation is comfortingly predictable more than tense, its ambiguity mild compared with, say, Tommy Lee Jones's hauntingly sad dream speech ending from No Country for Old Men.
The Coen Brothers' masterpiece is but one touchstone for Mackenzie. Also referenced is Michael Mann's Heat: the concurrent story lines with their inexorable slide toward violent resolution; and the idea of honour existing equally among thieves and cops. I was also reminded, in the ageing lawman and the righteous criminal, of Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, not least in the brazen reminders that our antiheroes are fighting back against a system constructed to screw over the everyman.
The idea of such decency and honour is fanciful, naturally, but fantasy is part and parcel of the mythologizing of what we might call the New Old West. This is a scorched landscape of masculine archetypes. Like John Boorman with Deliverance, Mackenzie is a foreigner painting on an all-American canvas; and he's joined by fellow outsiders Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, composers who've touched the broken heart of the American Dream before in The Assassination of Jesse James and The Road. Their subtle score here takes a back seat to a dark acoustic playlist.
Ben Foster can do unhinged-meets-vulnerable in his sleep, although this is Chris Pine as we've not really seen him. He's fine, if occasionally coming across as stolid when striving for ambivalent. Bridges is the growling, grumbling goodie version of True Grit's Rooster Cogburn. Marcus's banter with Alberto is fun at first, though after a while I found his racist barbs as wearying as the receiver himself does. Regardless, in both pairings – brothers or partners – a sense of well-worn chemistry is evident.
For fans of modern Westerns such as No Country and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, this is pretty much required viewing, even if expecting the sheer existential weight of those films may be pushing expectations too far. A well-intentioned morality tale, Hell or High Water has enough deadpan humour, familiar characterisation, and well-crafted action scenes to please genre aficionados and mainstream audiences alike.
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