K-SCORE: 67
Director: David Mackenzie
Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster
Spoiler Level: Minor
“cinematographers get out to their settings and can’t stop themselves from filming the landscape”
Man, reverse mortgages really come off better on Fox News. Here they’re the inciting force behind a lot of armed robbery and some deaths. To be fair, those ads do call them “too good to be true.”
Sad, though it is, I feel I need to give Hell or High Water considerable credit on a few basic grounds. For one, it’s a competently written story, not filled with plot holes and bass-ackwards character motivations, teleportation, ticking clocks, and giant beams ripping holes in the sky. Second, I thought, given that it’s a standalone drama, it would surely have a split narrative. They even start with a bank robbery in this film about bank robbers, so I thought definitely they’d have to put a little subtitle that said, “eight months earlier,” and show how the characters could have gotten themselves into such trouble. It’s how everyone else is doing it. Yet no, they started their story at the beginning and let the backstory stay in the background. Kudos. Lastly, the film doesn’t appear to be a sequel, remake, based on a novel, true story, video game, or particularly popular YouTube meme. I say “doesn’t appear to be” because I almost don’t believe this to be true. Further research is required. If the producers didn’t know this story was going to sell well based on its name alone, why did they finance it? Something very suspicious is going on here.
So, props to Hell or High Water for a job done, but I should admit that I really didn’t love it. I get tired of westerns, even NeoWesterns, after about ninety minutes of them, and I’ve seen a bunch recently. Cowboys are generally speaking bummers of people, filled with problems that their machismo demands they choke back with frowns and whiskey. Also, the cinematographers get out to their settings and can’t stop themselves from filming the landscape for hours on end. A lot of unnecessary shots makes for a slow story. This one especially, is so focused on its character work that they’re willing to spend six minutes on a scene where the two brother robbers are eating breakfast at a local diner and then another eight minutes on the two cop characters ordering some steaks and sitting outside a different local restaurant. I respect the writer and director’s commitment to telling a careful tale, but I was a bit bored.
“he has sex with a frumpy hotel receptionist while his brother is trying to sleep”
Hell or High Water’s biggest problems, though, are in its leads. Ben Foster’s performance is weak and uneven. Despite the script not supporting the decision that well, he decided to mostly play it as if he’s Mr. White from Reservoir Dogs a man who gets off on the violence and criminality for its own sake. Jeff Bridge’s character even believes completely that he has him pegged for such a man by the very end. Yet the script only supports that halfway. The movie is at its best when it encourages you to feel sympathy for the brothers robbing banks at gunpoint. So every bit of unnecessary aggression on the part of the older brother detracts from that. Specifically when he bashes one of the bank managers in the face with his gun, when he screams and gropes a prostitute, when he monologues about his own personality, and especially when he has sex with a frumpy hotel receptionist while his brother is trying to sleep one bed over, the guy comes across as an obnoxious villain, the kind of man you wouldn’t want to be around under any circumstances. The backstory for the character involves him falling into a life of crime because he shot his abusive father to death in a barn. That’s far more interesting than a brash man that just likes unloading machine gun fire at trucks.
Though it’s not really the fault of the actor, I had gripes with Jeff Bridge’s character as well, especially at the very end. He seems to be a dyed-in-the-wool lawman for most of the film, and then at the very last minute makes it seem like his primary motivations have always been a personal beef with the criminals and their choices. The conception of a gunslinging old-fashioned western duel looming on the horizon is not one that I buy at all. And the amount he claims to know the motivations behind these two men he never properly met is both unrealistic and arrogant. I’m not even sure he’s right about it.
Chris Pine’s performance emulates other leads from the genre almost completely. The net result: almost no emotional range in a character going through the most trying period of his life. It’s, uh, fine. The whole thing - fine. Goddamn Chris… Pine.