To cap off its technical brilliance is Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ incredibly evocative score, full of strings and sombre piano. Equally, the fast-paced action scenes, especially those in cars, are heart-pounding stuff. Next year, he will release Wind River, a film he wrote and directed.ĭirector David Mackenzie’s ( Young Adam, Starred Up) deftness with the camera resulted in incredible shots of the barren Texan landscape, replete with not-quite-golden fields, barely spinning windmills and pick-up trucks littered on every highway. Before he penned last year’s tension-filled Sicario, he was best known as a supporting actor on Sons of Anarchy and Veronica Mars. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s script is imbued with humanity and nuance. What elevates Hell or High Water is in the execution. The film makes clear that this is a struggling community - there are debt relief posters, ads for payday loans, foreclosure notices and a general distrust of banks, the institution that led them there. There is one notable exception that grounds it in 2016: this is unmistakably a post-GFC movie. The story and the characters could’ve worked at any point in time in the past 200 years, and in many ways Hell or High Water is very much a throwback. He expertly balances a heaviness in his bearing with the defiance of someone sick of the way things are, especially when he talks about poverty as a generational disease. Pine, usually a playboy with a twinkle in his eye, proves he can take on more than lightweight roles. The performances here are remarkable - everyone is on form, right down to the smaller roles - helping to build this very singular world.īridges is tone perfect as Marcus, a seasoned operator on the cusp of mandatory retirement but keen to prove he’s got more than a few good detecting years left. Do you root for the guys pointing guns in the faces of unsuspecting bank tellers? Or do you root for the Ranger who’s constantly cracking racist jokes at the expense of his Native-American partner? Hell or High Water is laced with moral ambiguity and it plays with your empathy. Everyone is compromised in this desolate place and everyone is trying to do what they think is right in a difficult situation. There are no clear heroes and there are no clear villains.
Texas Rangers Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto (Gil Birmingham) are on their trail across the state, through half-boarded up towns and depressing motels. Toby, a divorced father with two sons, is sensible, thoughtful and the brains behind the scheme while ex-con Tanner is volatile and impulsive. It’s a spare and bleak existence beautifully captured by Hell or High Water, a modern take on an old-school western heist movie.īrothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are in the middle of a string of small-fry armed bank robberies, liberating a few thousand dollars at a time, to save the family farm from being repossessed at the end of the week. WELCOME to west Texas, where cowboys on horseback can still be found wandering along the highway and road signs are riddled with bullet holes, no doubt by its trigger-happy citizenry.