Hell or High Water

Directed By: David Mackenzie Written By: Taylor SheridanStarring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham

Hell or High Water is the sort of muscular filmmaking  that seems to have gone by the way side in 2016. It’s a close-to-the-bone, contemporary Western of veracity, where horseback has been traded in for pickup trucks, and the mythology and romance the genre was instilled with in John Ford and Duke collaborations has been canned.

Hell or High Water takes place in West Texas, and it presents a West that is desolate and near-apocalyptic. The land has been economically raped by those atop who run the money, whose moral bankruptcy has spelt financial bankruptcy for middle and lower class Texas. As trucks coast along we see glimpses of “Fast Cash” and “In Debt?” billboards, subtle symbols of portent setting the film’s tone.

So tough are times that, in a terrific scene, a kind-hearted waitress turns wounded animal when a Texan Ranger tries to confiscate a tip she’s received as evidence. In David Mackenzie’s barren world, that tip is the only thing preserving a roof to live under.

There are a couple of films whose presence in a review are inevitable when discussing David Mackenzie’s latest. The first is No Country for Old Men, a film similarly offering an elegiac treatment of a once glorious West, posing an arena where men come to wrestle their demons, rather than an arena where the laconic cowboy comes to flex his machismo and marksmanship. In both instances a haggard lawman, whose thoughts have turned existential in the twilight of his life, tracks a young man who’s looking to secure a future for his family with tainted money. Once again there is a wild card element too, an unpredictable character proficient in mayhem who finds himself tied to that same tainted money through obligation.

T

he strength of Hell or High Water is its ability to supply that same painful yet enthralling slog to the gut of the Coen brothers’ 2007 masterpiece, even if it can’t quite muster that equally powerful slog to the heart. Mackenzies’ contemporary Western slightly lacks ambition and profundity, especially by comparison to its tonal compatriot from nine years prior, but it’s a film whose shortcomings pale to its quiet intensity and stiff upper lip. For a movie which features an awful lot of beer drinking, the experience of watching it feels rather comparable to downing a tall glass of whiskey, neat.

The other film evoked is The Big Short, stylistically an entirely different piece, but one which works as High Water’s precursor. Last year Adam McKay documented the moments leading to, and the moment of, America’s bank induced cataclysm. Here, society is paying for it.

Mackenzie and writer Taylor Sheridan (who also wrote Sicario), are sure to stress that it’s the money grubbing corporates who are the villains, not the criminals this financial hardship has spawned. As one character laments, the banks have displaced the common man, just as the settlers displaced the Native Americans centuries before.

Locating the banks as the real antagonists gives way to a fascinating dynamic, one in which we find ourselves pulling for each of the central characters simultaneously, despite the law pitting them against each other.

On one side of the legal fence we have divorcee Toby Howard, played but a quite mercurial Chris Pine. Pine suffocates the verve of Captain James T. Kirk, which he brought to the screen earlier this year, with a dishevelled weariness that makes him hard to recognise. Thankfully Pine isn’t totally unrecognisable,

he provides just the modicum of Hollywood glamour necessary to provide a needed respite from all the surrounding meanness. Toby has been knocking off a series of banks throughout West Texas, raising funds so he can keep Texas Midlands Bank’s greasy hands off the family ranch which faces foreclosure.

His brother is the wildcard, an ex-con named Tanner (Ben Foster), a man who uses violence unflinchingly and whose true motives for taking part in Toby’s operation are difficult to gauge. There’s a trace of The Wild Bunch’s Pike Bishop in Foster’s character; perhaps Tanner is looking for any excuse that’ll allow him to procrastinate hanging up his guns.

On the other side of the law we have the two rangers hunting them, Jeff Bridges as the fatigued Marcus Hamilton (the Howard brothers are Marcus’ last assignment before retirement), and his half Mexican, half Native American right-hand-man Alberto (Gil Birmingham).

There’s an unexpected amount of humanity in Hell or High Water. Both relationships, Toby and Tanner, Marcus and Alberto, are characterised by an authentic fraternity. The interplay of the characters lures us into each of their spheres.  Particularly great is the lovingly racist shtick of Marcus who has far too good a time sticking it to his minority partner. Our alignments are circular, so that when the action comes (this is still a Western after all), it’s both painful and thrilling.

What impresses most about the film is the assurance with which it’s made. Mackenzie’s pacing is confident, boldly championing interaction as the action for much of the film. The director never succumbs to gratuitousness; unlike the characters we so often see in these movies, the director isn’t trigger happy. Instead Mackenzie opts to hang the inevitable carnage over our heads in order to wring as much drama from it as possible. In the end, he succeeds.       

Rating:

3.75/4