Hell or High Water (2016)

When you hear the words bank robbery film, a certain picture comes to mind: masked figures, blazing gunfire, a chase. This film twists that picture. The empty plains of Texas, wasteland scarred by shale-gas drilling rigs, a small town lined with shuttered shops. The camera slowly traces that landscape, showing first why two brothers had no choice but to rob banks. The motive for the crime is already inscribed within the scenery.

What it’s about — Brothers robbing banks to save the ranch

Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers. With the ranch their mother left them on the verge of foreclosure over bank debt, Toby hatches a dangerous plan to pass debt-free land on to his two sons. He will rob multiple branches of the very bank that cornered them, and use that money to repay the debt and save the ranch. The older brother Tanner, who helps him, is an ex-convict, impulsive and a lover of risk. Pursuing the brothers’ robbery spree are the about-to-retire Texas Ranger Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and his partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham). The film alternates between the fleeing brothers and the aging lawmen as it moves toward its conclusion.

Direction — A crime’s motive inscribed on a parched landscape

David Mackenzie’s direction is in no hurry. Even the robbery scenes are shot so that helplessness, rather than tension, registers first. The fact that the townspeople hate the bank more than the robbers, the fact that a diner waitress refuses to hand over the robber’s money she received as a tip. As these details accumulate, the audience comes to ask who the real plunderer is. The sentiment of rural America, collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis, seeps into every corner of the frame, and the film lets it flow between landscape and dialogue without preaching.

The cinematography frames the wide sky and the parched earth together, making the figures small. It is a visual way of saying how precarious human plans are before an enormous environment. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis lends a texture of country and blues, deepening the desolation. The gunfight in the latter half is brief but heavy, because the violence is presented not as flashy action but as the consequence of an irreversible choice.

Performance — Chris Pine erasing his polish as a head of household

Chris Pine erases his usual sleek image to persuasively play a weary man of few words holding his family together. Toby’s inner life, wavering between guilt and resolve, is conveyed through small shifts of expression. Ben Foster injects a dangerous vitality into the older brother Tanner. He is a man who might go off at any moment, yet the fact that his affection for his brother is genuine keeps him from becoming a mere villain. The chemistry of the two actors is the film’s emotional center.

Jeff Bridges wryly renders the soon-to-retire ranger Marcus. Loneliness and fear hide beneath his rough jokes toward his partner, and that balance makes the character three-dimensional. The exchanges he trades with Alberto, played by Gil Birmingham, deliver both laughter and melancholy at once.

What the film says — Who is the real plunderer?

This film does not divide good from evil. Toby’s crime is clearly wrong, but the structure that drove him to it is not just either. The bank profits again through drilling rights, and the poor cannot escape the yoke of debt. The setup in which the money the brothers steal ultimately returns to that very bank is a bitter irony. The film does not easily tell you whom to root for, and that very ambiguity is the reason this work lingers.

Ratings and reception

Hell or High Water holds a 7.6/10 on IMDb. Its Rotten Tomatoes freshness is a very high 97 percent of critical support, and its Metacritic score reaches 88 out of 100. Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, and Jeff Bridges was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. With a Best Picture nomination as well, it became a case of a small-scale film earning broad critical recognition.

Verdict

There are no flashy events and no tidy lessons, yet this film makes you chew it over for a long time afterward. That is because the brothers’ love and responsibility, and the era’s landscape that drives them toward tragedy, interlock so firmly. With its outstanding skill at peering into society’s flesh while wearing the skin of a genre, ★4.0 is well deserved.

Recommended for

• Those who love stories set in the gray zone, where good and evil are not clear-cut
• Those who prefer restrained direction that conveys its message through landscape and feeling
• Those who want to see the deep performances of Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine