Five stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity and fleeting sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.19.16
Most films are lucky if they
successfully deliver compelling drama or
perceptive social commentary. Very few do both at the same time.
This is one of the rare ones.
 |
| After a bank robbery doesn't go quite according to plan, Toby (Chris Pine, left) and his brother Tanner (Ben Foster) contemplate their next move. The options are limited, and time is running out... |
Hell or High Water is the finest contemporary drama
thus far in a year that has produced few American films of substance. Director
David Mackenzie and writer Taylor Sheridan (Sicario)
deliver a taut crime thriller that’s also a shattering indictment of
contemporary economic malaise, and the lingering havoc wrought by the 2007-8
subprime mortgage crisis.
The film is beautifully mounted
and superbly acted by all four leads. Sheridan is equally adept at absorbing
narrative and engaging character dynamics, along with having a great ear for
the gently snarky banter that often bonds men who seem distant and crusty on
the surface, but in fact deeply respect each other.
The resulting atmosphere is
fascinating for its complexity: We don’t often encounter films that manage to
be quite funny at times, while simultaneously enveloping us in an uneasy
atmosphere of impending disaster. Grim portent hovers over these characters,
like an ink-black thunderstorm visible on the horizon, and approaching
inexorably.
In many ways, this film looks,
sounds and feels like the Coen brothers’ No
Country for Old Men; it certainly paints a similarly bleak portrait of the
depressed regions of modern-day Texas. But that 2007 thriller depended (to a
degree) on grotesques, in order to advance its story; you’ll find no monsters
here, along the lines of Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh.
No, the protagonists in Hell or High Water are painfully
familiar, and that’s what makes this saga so heartbreaking: We know these guys. They’re the ones who
live in the dilapidated house down the street, with the unkempt yard and dead
vehicle(s). They hang around too much because employment has been spotty, and
they’re always scrambling to remain one bank payment ahead of foreclosure.
Sheridan sets his story in West
Texas, where the distinction between honest men and reluctant outlaws has
blurred beyond recognition. We meet brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben
Foster), guns drawn and faces concealed by masks, as they rob a tiny branch of
the Midland Bank, terrorizing the two lone employees in the process. The boys
are careful, taking only loose, small-denomination bills and avoiding the
bundled larger bills with the explosive dye packs.
They roar away in a battered sedan,
Tanner exhilarated by the adrenaline rush, the quieter Toby chastened by what
they’ve just done. Their getaway takes them past foreclosed homes, shuttered
businesses and countless billboards advertising payday loans; cinematographer
Giles Nuttgens gives these surroundings the stark, washed-out look of cheap
paint peeled away by too many seasons of blazing hot sunlight.
Then, later that same morning,
they do it again ... at another
small-town branch of the Midland Bank.
Sheridan sketches in details via
clipped conversations. Toby, divorced and inherently decent, has just buried
their mother; he’s the sole remaining occupant on a hard-scrabble farm that has
been in the family for generations. Mother’s passing was long, painful and
medically expensive, funded by a reverse mortgage on the property, the bank —
Midland — poised to foreclose.
Toby hasn’t been able to find
steady work, and is months behind on child support payments to his wife and
their two sons. In desperation, he has turned to his older brother, a
short-tempered ex-con, in order to tap Tanner’s one genuine talent: violent
crime. Toby is the smart one — the planner — but he’d never have the nerve to
pull off such a daylight robbery on his own; Tanner supplies the necessary
momentum.
Tanner regards it as
hell-for-leather fun, Foster’s always spooky eyes aglow with frightening intensity.
Tanner is an unchecked, impulsive monster; he makes the mere act of drawing
breath terrifying. And yet he’s only there, at Toby’s side, because his little
brother asked for help. Their bond is deep and loving, and this is the other,
somehow tragic side of Tanner’s character.
When Foster drops his sunglasses,
at one point, to fix his brother’s gaze while saying, simply, “I love you,” we
don’t doubt it for a second. But it’s also an emotional gut punch, because it’s
the last thing we expect to hear from
this psychopath.
Pine, who seems to be everywhere
these days, is equally persuasive as the desperate Toby: clearly ashamed by
what circumstances have driven him to, but equally convinced that his cause is
righteous. We see the struggle in Pine’s gaze: equal parts regret and stubborn
determination. Toby is trying his best, and many of Pine’s scenes are almost
embarrassingly intimate: the uncomfortable pauses that characterize his
encounters with ex-wife Debbie (a nicely understated Marin Ireland); and his
wary but devoted bond with Tanner.
In a palpable sense, Toby and
Tanner see themselves making a final stand for a family that never has fulfilled
the promise of safety that should be provided.
Sheridan’s story is a saga of roots and legacy, where these two brothers are
the last in a lineage of failed men and women, and who regard themselves as the
only ones left to somehow stop the cycle of violence, poverty and shame.
Their actions certainly aren’t
viewed with disdain by many of the witnesses later interviewed by police; banks
— and particularly the oleaginous managers who interface with the public, while
making insincere promises — haven’t been depicted with such contempt since the
days of Bonnie and Clyde.
Which segues nicely to the other
half of this story’s equation: aging Texas ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff
Bridges) and his younger partner, Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). Marcus, mere
weeks from mandatory retirement, revels at this opportunity for one final,
glorious arrest; Alberto recognizes that his companion may not survive on his
own, without the challenge of the work that has been his entire life.
They’re a hoot together. Marcus
is irascible and foul-mouthed, forever lobbing racist taunts — like globs of
spit — at Alberto, who is half Mexican, half Native American. We initially
wonder why Alberto doesn’t smack the grumpy ol’ coot in the snoot, but then we
note the subtlety of Birmingham’s just-barely there grin, and the twinkle in
his eyes. Marcus doesn’t put any heat behind his epithets; they’re simply his
way of making small talk.
And besides: Alberto gives as
good as he gets.
Bridges has been on a phenomenal
roll lately, delivering one terrific performance after another: in Crazy Heart, the remake of True Grit and now here. Marcus is quite
a study: superficially annoying as hell, but undeniably shrewd. He misses
nothing. And it’s telling, when Marcus develops a somewhat far-fetched theory
about this string of bank robberies, that Alberto doesn’t argue the point; he
knows, from experience, to accept the older man’s wisdom.
Marcus and Alberto aren’t
brothers in the biological sense, but their bond is just as deep, their mutual
respect quite palpable.
Mackenzie surrounds his four
stars with a roster of scene-stealing bit players. Dale Dickey is a hoot as the
feisty teller in the first bank robbed by the boys, suggesting that “if they’re
smart,” they’ll quit before things get out of hand. Margaret Bowman is flat-out
hilarious as the cranky, wizened waitress in a T-Bone diner, who — taking an
order from Marcus and Alberto — demands to know what they don’t want with their steaks.
Katy Mixon, finally, develops a
full-blown presence in a few short scenes as Jenny Ann, a waitress in a
different diner: initially sympathetic, as she senses Toby’s inner turmoil; and
later quite high-spirited, as she refuses to cooperate with Marcus’
investigation. It’s one of the best brief performances I’ve ever seen.
The often melancholy on-screen
action is given additional emotional heft by a soundtrack laced with doleful blues
and country/western tunes: Townes Van Zandt’s “Dollar Bill Blues,” Colter
Walls’ “Sleeping on the Blacktop,” Chris Stapleton’s “Outlaw State of Mind” and
many others. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis augment the mood with occasional — but
always effective — bits of mournful orchestral underscore.
All the elements are top-notch,
and everything works; Mackenzie assembles and orchestrates his film with the
precision of a master conductor. The atmospheric transitions are graceful and
logical, our emotions carried in a multitude of directions, always
persuasively. Mackenzie and Sheridan even work in some sly political
commentary, suggesting how ludicrously dangerous it is, residing in an
open-carry state where anybody could be a trigger-happy lunatic.
Hell or High Water
is an impeccably crafted, thoroughly absorbing drama. It’s also a heartfelt and
deeply important statement of our times: something we’ll look back on, in
decades to come, as a reminder of the price of institutional despair.
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