Just as Bonnie and Clyde made poignant anti-heroes of its thrill seekers back in 1967, Hell or High Water attempts to create empathy for two brothers who rob several Texas banks in a modern tale of redemption and ruin. It largely succeeds. It might have succeeded even more powerfully had the filmmakers not divided the action between those brothers and the two Texas Rangers on their trail. Bonnie and Clyde wisely kept the police in the background most of the time, but this film tries to balance the action and thus divides the emotional impact of the story.
David Mackenzie’s film is stark and modern, eschewing sentimentalism in favor of hardscrabble realism and a poverty that pervades our country like a plague. It tells its story in spurts; two robberies occur before we even know who these characters are. Gradually we learn why these two brothers (Chris Pine, Ben Foster) are risking everything, and we accept the elder brother’s intuition that it will not end well. Investigating them, and trying to jump in front of their crime spree are a pair of Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges, Gil Birmingham), who not only balance the story but provide the comic relief to this taut tale. I personally feel the movie would have been better without them, focusing solely on the brothers, but the most entertaining portions of the story are undoubtedly provided by Bridges and Birmingham.
The acting is very good, with Bridges, Birmingham and the always underrated Ben Foster making the most of their roles. It’s a story with a muddled moral center, but that is precisely the point: the situation has become so bad that good people are forced to do bad things to get by, and innocent people get hurt. Irony and humor leaven the rougher aspects, at least until one of the brothers finally explodes into full badass mode — an inevitability, given the situation and his temperament. The film’s greatest triumph is that we still empathize with him even as he turns into a monster.
My feeling is that this is a good film but not a great one. I would have focused almost solely on the brothers, or, conversely, on the Texas Rangers trying to get ahead of the mysterious robbers, leaving the opposite side almost hidden until the climax, and the aftermath. Showing both sides tempers the drama, and lessens its shocks. Even so, it is still a very solid movie, possibly one that will make its mark on the awards shows early next year. ☆ ☆ ☆. 14 September 2016.