(contains minor
spoilers)
It is so obvious from Hell or High Water that screenwriter Taylor Sheridan is a Texan native that
I haven’t even Googled it. The dialogue,
hyper-masculinity, derisory sense of humour and 2nd amendment
fetishism of this Wild West Road Movie all scream a lifetime’s research in the
Lone Star State.
Two brothers, Toby (Chris Pine) & Tanner (Ben
Foster), are robbing small town banks for small bills with nothing but
pistols and balaclavas and a “shitty” getaway car. The money, for Toby, is for a family emergency
and strictly business, yet Tanner is fresh out of jail and enjoys the thrill of
the heist. The film then evolves into a
double buddy-movie retiring detective Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and Native American Alberto (Gil Birmingham) bickering like an old odd-couple as they follow the
brothers’ tracks.
Anyone who was ever travelled around
Texas or the American South will instantly recognize the small towns of the
Southern heartland – They are littered across the landscape from Arizona to
Georgia. Rows of wooden houses with
porches, a handful of carnivorous barbecue restaraunts, a motel, a gun shop, a
hardware store and, of course, a small town bank (with no security). Cinematographer Giles Nuttgens does an amazing job of capturing the debilitating
heat of northern Texas, with the haze and dust surrounds the brothers as they
speed from bank to bank.
The film also captures beautifully the
fervent reverence Texans have with the 2nd amendment and its ability
to solve problems. A number of times
during the bank raids, it is the fury (and armament) of the customers that
cause more problems than the ensuing police – not enough films explore the
collective fantasy of small town vigilantism.
Having said that, the firepower unleashed in the final scenes certainly
prove that the American Police are armed to the bloody teeth.
As has been the case with a hug
proportion of Indie films since 2008/9, (see: The
Big Short, The
Wolf of Wall Street, Lost
River, Out
of the Furnace from this blog alone) the real villain here is the banks
and their predatory lenders. Although
our sympathies change over time concerning the brothers as their characters
develop, it is the greedy bankers that propel the narrative into action. (To see how strong this narrative trope has
taken hold, try if you will to even imagine a banker character hero in the last
decade of film – not anti-hero; just hero)
Hell
or High Water is a film
about small crime in small towns but with big consequences. Whereas David Mackenzie’s last brilliant film
Starred Up confined its father and
son characters to a claustrophobic jail, this is about brothers on the open
road – albeit stuck in a tragic direction…
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