Dear Write Readers,
Another year has passed! Another year older, perhaps another year wiser, and another Oscar season is upon us! How time flies!
Let’s start our journey in the Wild West. The wild, new West, we could call it. Opening on wide open spaces and vast emptiness, “Closed” signs and motionless trains, this Texas is reminiscent of the Texas we’ve seen in old westerns with John Wayne. I’m ready for typical cowboys with guns clanking at their hips and spurs on their heels to saunter down a dusty road, looking for whiskey in a saloon.
Hell or High Water doesn’t disappoint, though it’s different than what we might expect. There are certainly cowboys- the new cowboy, the modern American cowboy. These cowboys have nothing, living in the middle of nowhere, with one small bank branch in town, with the next being eighty or more miles away. These cowboys have no money, no jobs, and no prospects. They don’t ride horses, unless the horses under their beaten up hoods count. Did I mention they rob banks?
Spoiler alerts ahead.
Written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by David Mackenzie, Hell or High Water is the story of two brothers desperate to save their family ranch, regardless of the personal cost. It is nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Supporting Actor for Jeff Bridges. In Hell or High Water, we learn that Toby Howard, played by Chris Pine, and his brother Tanner, played by Ben Foster, who run around Texas robbing varying branches of the Texas Midlands Bank. The rangers on the case, Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham) provide the comic relief as they work to discover who these men are, and what it is that they want. We learn that Toby and Tanner’s mother has recently passed away, and that the bank is getting ready to foreclose on the house, unless the reverse mortgage can be paid of, in the sum of $46,000. This is not money which is readily available to the Howard brothers, and to the frustration of everyone, oil has been found underneath the house, which Toby desperately needs to keep in order to provide for his sons. The brothers are robbing Texas Midlands Bank branches as a form of justice, given that this is the bank which is taking their land. They launder their money through a casino, after they gamble with it, presumably to increase their earnings. The checks are then made back to the bank.
After a number of heists in which we see Tanner’s volatile nature that landed him in prison to begin with, and Toby’s desire to not actually hurt anyone but simply get what they see as their due. Unfortunately for the brothers, Ranger Hamilton figures them out, and catches up to them at the branch in Post, where the boys are run out of town by angry townsmen. In this updated western version of a shoot out, Toby gets hit. Here the brothers split up, Toby heading back to the casino with the money, and Tanner in the opposite direction to create a diversion. Given the conversation they have before Toby drives away, it seems clear Tanner knows he isn’t going to make it out unscathed. Toby parks himself high on a hill and is taking sniper shots at the rangers below, and hits Ranger Parker. Ranger Hamilton is distraught, and convinces one of the local men to get him around the ridge to the other side, where he then snipes the sniper and saves the day. By this time, Toby has made it through a police checkpoint and to the casino, where he gets the money and gets to the bank in the nick of time, and saves his family ranch. He then uses Texas Midlands Bank to set up a trust for the money his oil-rich land is making him. Eager to have the business, the bank readily agrees and the rangers rule Toby out as a suspect, given his previously clean record. However, Ranger Hamilton always knew all along that Toby was the other bank robber, and post retirement Hamilton heads out to visit Toby, to talk to him about what happened. They end the conversation prematurely due to the arrival of Toby’s ex-wife and sons, but Hamilton promises they’ll finish the conversation soon, and each swearing to the other that they’ll “give them some peace”.
Hell or High Water is a strangely captivating film. Both Chris Pine and Ben Foster do a beautiful job playing down-on-their-luck modern cowboys looking for vengeance. They somehow bring humanity to bank robbing in a way I didn’t think could be Oscar-worthy. This is not a Bonnie and Clyde story. Gone are the days where people can get away with robbing banks, a man in the diner says, and I agree. They enter this scheme with both eyes wide open, though Toby’s character is a little more naive than his brother Tanner. Once the shooting starts and people begin to die, we can see Toby realize he has bitten off more than he can chew, more than he can live with for the rest of his life. Tanner, on the other hand, has a mean streak, and we can tell he’s in it for the glory as well as the family saving. Though neither Pine nor Foster have been nominated for any Oscars, they provide a solid performance which keeps the movie moving forward.
It is Jeff Bridges, along with his complicated relationship with his sidekick Gil Birmingham which provides the most interest. Birmingham is the Tonto to Bridges’ Lone Ranger. An ethnically ambiguous individual, Ranger Hamilton makes the most of his good fortune and makes the most racially insensitive jokes he can, both about Mexicans as well as Native Americans alike. Bridges is biting, caustic, rough and world weary, acting as the New West version of a Columbo-style detective, sussing out the brothers’ moves in order to catch them in the act. We learn about his impending retirement, about the loss of his child, about how he fears sitting still for the rest of his life. He mourns the passing of his partner in the only way a true Texas Ranger could- a harsh laugh which might be a sob, and an act of vengeance via a shot through the skull only a true cowboy could make. Bridges makes the role, and the role brings such life to the film that a Best Supporting Actor nom could have been the only possible response.
The cinematography is gorgeous, capturing long shots of open plains. We get glorious pans, skies that go on forever, and miles of landscape scattered with cacti, cattle herds, and buildings which once must have been bustling but have long since been abandoned. However, the film is oddly slow. Perhaps a cinematic device to help capture the feel of dusty, backwater Texas, the pacing moves abruptly, sometimes quick and exciting, the rest plodding and lazy. We get casual snips of emotion-laden conversation, set against the background of a fence or a trailer. Back story is laid out like fresh towels in the motel the Rangers get in order to be closer to the bank robbing action. Bursts of speed surrounded by lazy rivers of exposition, this film is confusing, but not unpleasant. It is deeply human, filled up with the personalities of the New West. We see a fiercely tempered waitress in a run down diner, who didn’t ask your opinion on how you’d like your t-bone steak cooked. There’s the younger, sweet waitress desperately flirting with the most eligible bachelor whose walked through the door in what must be ages, barring his bank-robbing tendencies. The flabbergasted bank tellers who are astonished at a rude word, let alone a gun under their noses. Then there’s the kind older man who found a bunch of coins in his home, hoping they’ll be worth something, attempting to make his exchange when two young men with guns barge in. And mostly, the widely placed view that the bank, this thing everyone is fighting to protect, is also the villain of the story, stealing money from everyone. There isn’t a single soul in this time or space who doesn’t acknowledge the humor of fighting so hard to protect the very institution that’s crushing them all.
This story is filled with the struggles that come with just getting by after a recession has gutted your town and left its residents with next to nothing of any value. It’s filled with southern hospitality, southern charm, and a lot of Texas guns. This New West is no less barren or desolate than the old, simply remodeled. Hell or High Water puts all of this on screen in a very Texan way, no frills, laid out plain and simple, thank you very much. You can feel it inviting us in with a nod, and if we don’t like it, well that’s just the way it is. Rarely does the essence of a film fill you up so much that it requires little else to sustain the story. Perhaps the action might be unnecessary. Just the feeling of the place and the conversation of the people who live in it are enough to make Hell or High Water feel triumphantly Texan. There is no telling if this film will rope in any Oscars, but it’ll ride out just as it rode in, guns blazing and ready to give ‘em hell.
Live, Love, Learn