{"id":1507,"date":"2024-08-03T04:03:47","date_gmt":"2024-08-03T04:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1507"},"modified":"2024-10-14T00:47:02","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T04:47:02","slug":"hell-or-high-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/03\/hell-or-high-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Hell or High Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hell or High Water <\/strong>(2016)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CBS Films\/Action-Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (some strong violence, language throughout, brief sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David Mackenzie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Taylor Sheridan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Giles Nuttgens\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 12, 2016 (US)\/August 19, 2016 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham, Marin Ireland, John-Paul Howard, Katy Mixon, Dale Dickey, Kevin Rankin, Christopher W. Garcia, Buck Taylor, Gregory Cruz, Margaret Bowman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $27M (US)\/$37.9M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the opening moments of Hell or High Water<\/strong>, graffiti on the wall of a bank parking lot reads \u201cThree tours in Iraq but no bailout for people like us.\u201d There are recurring shots of empty homes in foreclosure, boarded-up businesses and billboards advertising fast cash. These are the times we live in. For some, they\u2019re desperate times. Hell or High Water<\/strong>, a Southern-fried noir piece from British filmmaker David Mackenzie (Starred Up), is a crime drama for the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The bank-robbing brothers, divorced dad Toby (Pine, Star Trek) and ex-con Tanner (Foster, The Mechanic), at the center of the action aren\u2019t doing it for thrills. Their crime spree is motivated by the legal hanky-panky the local bank pulled in foreclosing on the family ranch. Their solution is actually quite brilliant. It basically boils down to robbing Peter to pay Peter. The brothers rob only branches of the bank responsible, Texas Midland. They take only the cash in the drawer, no wads or bills over $20. After laundering it at an Indian casino, they pay the bank with their own money. Now that\u2019s what I call ingenuity!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hot on their trail is Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Bridges, Crazy Heart), an aging lawman on the verge of retirement. He\u2019s an avuncular sort who immediately sees there\u2019s a method to the robbers\u2019 seeming madness. He and his partner, Alberto (Birmingham, the Twilight movies), set out to catch the robbers. They have the kind of relationship where Hamilton can make jokes about Alberto\u2019s Comanche heritage without fear of being punched out.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Some will invariably complain that the middle section of Hell or High Water<\/strong> moves too slowly. I\u2019ll concede there\u2019s a lull in the action, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s empty space. This is when we learn the brothers\u2019 reasons for robbing the banks. They want to save the family home which, at first glance, doesn\u2019t look like much at all. Stick around, there\u2019s more than meets the eye about this piece of land. We also watch as the two lawman hunt their quarry, staking out the branch Marcus thinks is the next likely target.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Bridges is one of those actors that, like fine wine, keep getting better with age. He brings to Hell or High Water<\/strong> the same gravelly quality he brought to Crazy Heart and True Grit. I\u2019ve always regarded Bridges as one of my favorite actors and that remains true despite his involvement in less-than-stellar projects like RIPD (a guilty pleasure but still), Seventh Son and The Giver. He delivers a quietly commanding performance here. Pine is also very good as the more level-headed of the brothers. He\u2019s the one that devised the plan. Gone is the cocky, smirky quality with which he imbues his Captain Kirk. It shows he\u2019s maturing as an actor. Foster, who specializes in loose cannon characters, does a fine job as the volatile brother. He\u2019s a powder keg waiting to go off.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The movie\u2019s Texas setting (it was actually shot in New Mexico, but never mind) is a real asset. Mackenzie makes great use of the barren landscapes, shuttered properties and gun-toting citizens. Since the Lone Star state has an open-carry law, it\u2019s a given civilians will try and take the law into their own hands. But here\u2019s the thing. The robbers aren\u2019t presented as villains. In these times, the bankers are the bad guys. As such, the brothers are shown as sympathetic characters. We end up rooting for them. Even Marcus admires them but he has a duty he\u2019s sworn to uphold.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Much of Hell or High Water<\/strong> plays like a Cormac McCarthy story, No Country for Old Men in particular. It\u2019s a welcome break from the noise and flash of the big summer movies. It\u2019s quieter, subtler and smarter than (almost) anything you\u2019re likely to see at the multiplexes. Even the heist scenes are comparably subdued. Mackenzie, working from a script by Taylor Sheridan (Sicario), doesn\u2019t try to outdo the likes of Heat or any of its imitators. That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s without any big scenes. The car chase at the end involves, at one point, a machine gun. Hell or High Water<\/strong> is a modern-day western where the bank robbers elicit the support of the audience. You want to see them get away with their crimes because the underlying cause is right. Welcome to the new millennium.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hell or High Water (2016)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CBS Films\/Action-Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (some strong violence, language throughout, brief sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David Mackenzie\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Taylor Sheridan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Giles Nuttgens\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 12, 2016 (US)\/August 19, 2016 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham, Marin Ireland, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-hidden-treasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Hell-or-High-Water-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1507"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2044,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions\/2044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}