Hell or High Water movie review

[steven clark]

After the Free State of Jones, if you want a good white movie, you got to go back to Texas. Hell or High Water is a modern western directed by David Mackenzie, and his British sensibility gives a new take on this genre.
It's a throwback to 70's movies, dealing with two brothers, played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster. Pine is a moody, quiet man whose sick mother died a while ago, and their ranch is almost worthless and the world around them is full of for sale signs, mortgage buy-backs, etc., showing the real-estate collapse of 2008. The bank (Texas Midland Bank, to be exact), suckered Pine's mother, and he stands to lose the ranch…knowing that there's oil underneath, and the bank is waiting to grab the land.
He robs Texas Midland Banks, taking the small cash in a plot to pay off the debt as well as his child support and beat the bank's deadline. He's aided by his ex-con brother Foster, a wild card bravo who compares himself to the Comanches, and both knock off banks with growing success.
This comes to the attention of jeff Bridges, playing a Texas ranger boxed into forced retirement, and with an Indian/Mexican partner he ribs every chance he gets, sees what Pine is up to , and tracks him.
The movie offers a tragic but almost rousing conclusion, and everyone gives a great performance in what might be the first movie of the Trump era.
Texans are ornery and sassy. No one like the bank (there's a great scene where Pine stares down a banker), a lot of people have guns, and the film shows the arid West Texas land caught between sadness and tragedy, much like the Russian film Leviathan showed a Russia caught in corruption.
It's a man's film: women are waitresses or embittered divorcees, and the growing showdown between Bridges and Pines is masterful and chilling, of men caught trying to do justice and defending their land and family. It's years ahead of the comic book movies, and Pines, who plays Kirk in the recent re-boot of Star Trek, has a quiet intensity that stays with you.
This is also a nigger-free film. The races here are white and Indian, with a barely-kept truce between them. It's also a good WN film. It has white men determined to FIGHT…Pines with calculation, and Foster with a lot of firepower and a Viking's swagger.
It's a thoughtful, entertaining comment on America, manhood, and taking on the system, and once again, it needs an Englishman's eyes to catch it right.