Hell or High Water Review

Hell or High Water is the second movie from Sicario scribe Taylor Sheridan, directed by David McKenzie, that follows bank robber brothers Toby and Tanner Howard (Chris Pine and Ben Foster, respectively) as they're hunted by Texas Rangers Marcus Hamilton and Alberto Parker (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham).  Like Sicario before it, this movie has an exaggerated sense of realism that grounds the story has the stakes climb higher. Unlike its predecessor though, this film never quite achieves the level of tension as the hunt goes on and it never feels like the brothers are in any danger of being caught in a ever tightening noose.

That's not to say that the movie is not without it's strong points.  Foster and Pine have a very loose chemistry of brothers who are getting along for the moment  by managing the tension of past injuries and slights that keep bubbling up to surface and have to be kept in check at all times.  Bridges and Birmingham also have a loose, steady rapport as the Rangers hunting the brothers down.  The movie is also gorgeous to look at, with McKenzie following the lead of Breaking Bad and No Country for Old Men in letting the wide, desolate desert landscapes become a character in and of themselves.  The film also does a great job of making each podunk town scattered across West Texas as places whose time has come and gone, with the only thing left for them to do is rot back into the land they sprang from.

Another vastly appreciated tack this movie takes is that it doesn't treat itself has "important" or drag out a soapbox to berate the audience with its message.  Yes, there is a running theme of how theft by individuals and institutions is a cyclical thing that's playing itself out yet again, but aside from pretty much three lines from Parker that explicitly lay this out, the movie doesn't dwell on it longer than it has to.

But, there are problems.  Mainly, the pacing never really takes off.  For much of the movie, we're  just cruising along watching the brothers robbery scheme go of without any kind of hitch.  Which leads to the second problem of the movie, the investigation never seems like an actual threat, so for all intents and purposes when we're watching the Ranger sections of the movie it just seems like we're watching two people just kinda putter around hoping to stumble on the people they're chasing.  At no point in the movie do the Howard brothers even mention that any law enforcement could be investigating them, the very thought seems so meaningless and inconsequential that neither brother, even first time criminal Toby, can't bring himself to worry about it.  Thing is though, if this a cops and robbers movie, than the robbers have to at least, in theory, consider the cops a threat.  Basically, if the cops aren't seen as dangerous to their in-movie enemies, the audience isn't going to have much a reason to worry about them, either.

The lackadaisical pacing also hurts the movie by making the turn to the climax really telegraphed and mostly ineffective.  Both partnerships make their move to the final robbery independently and pretty much on a lark on both sides.  Also since this last robbery has "this is the one that goes bad" written all over it, so when things do go sideways, there's no real hell breaks loose moment or escalation of, well, anything.  Everything just happens, and then the movie pretty much ends.

Qualms aside though, this is a pretty solid movie.  The directing isn't anything spectacular, but it gets the job done; all the actors turn in good, subtle performances, and the movie isn't filled with pointless scenes to pad itself out or dialogue trying to make itself sound important.  In the end, it's good but not great, which at this point in the summer, pretty much makes it the best thing around.

Grade: B