Hell or High Water (2016)

David Mackenzie’s (Spread, Asylum) 2016 surprise is a movie you’ll like if you go in with minimal expectations. You might be disappointed if you think it will be your typical bank robbery thriller. You might be disappointed if you think it will be full of suspense. If you are interested in a simple character-driven story with a little more than meets the initial eye, you might enjoy Hell or High Water. It’s a bit more quirky than you might think. If you expect a massive bank caper drama, this isn’t it. Mackenzie tries to take a different angle with this movie, adding humor, recklessness, and interesting side characters to a story, primarily a bank heist film. And while this movie has a 98% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, this doesn’t mean that most reviewers are scoring it a 9.8/10. Instead, it means that 49 out of 50 give this movie a positive review. While it is an interesting film (and the first one of 2016 I have watched twice), it is no longer a Best Picture candidate. I know there was talk that it might sneak into the race. I do not know how it got nominated for Best Picture, whereas a movie like Sully did not. While Hell or Hgh Water is a decent movie, I think many people (including myself) expected it to be far more significant than it was.

The premise is pretty simple, though you don’t know the reason why the events of the movie are occurring until, really, the very end. We meet brothers Toby (Chris Pine – Unstoppable, Star Trek Into Darkness) and Tanner Howard (Ben Foster – The Messenger, The Finest Hours) in the film’s first scene as they are robbing a Texas Midland Bank in a small town in western Texas. The brothers are novices, and it’s as evident to us as it is to the female teller they are about to rob as she unlocks the bank doors. She even tells the nervous brothers, “You’re new at this, aren’t you?” before she informs them that there is no money in the cash drawers and the only person with keys to the safe is the bank manager, who doesn’t come in for another 30 minutes. And so the trio has to wait for him to arrive before Tanner pistol whips him out, and they can take the keys to open the safe. The brothers are only interested in small, unmarked bills ($5, $10, and $20) and only want to take the bank’s money, not those who use it for their holdings. They pick Texas Midland banks, particularly for reasons they will learn about later. But, from the very get-go, we know that the Howard brothers are, at best, amateurs and, at worst, sloppy.

hell or high water movie still

But they are not hardened criminals. Well, at least Toby isn’t. Tanner has spent some time in prison, and we learn that he’s kind of into the bank-robbing thing to help his brother. Toby’s reasons, though (at first), are unknown. But then we learn that their mother recently died after being so sick that Tanner’s room in the house that they grew up in was turned into a clinic room for her. Tanner was away and felt guilty that he didn’t know how sick their mother was. We find out that Toby owes  $40,000 to the bank by the end of the week, or the bank will foreclose and take the ranch. Toby has no intention of letting that happen. He intends to give the ranch to his two sons (he is currently estranged from his ex-wife). There’s the motivation for the story. So why rob several small banks rather than get a big pay from one bank? They don’t want the FBI on their tail, so they must keep the money they take under the FBI threshold to get involved.

So instead of the FBI, the Howards have Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges – Crazy HeartThe Contender) and his partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham – Twilight, The Lone Ranger) investigating the story. Partners for a long time, the pair are like an old married couple, poking fun at each other to get under the other’s skin. Marcus is set to retire and wants to go out by putting away the criminals in a higher profile case such as this. Marcus and Alberto are old and quirky, but they aren’t lazy. While their careers seemingly haven’t been the most thrilling in the world, they’ve been good at their jobs. But, perhaps, there hasn’t been enough excitement, and this is a chance for them (especially Marcus) to hang his out on as he heads out the precinct’s front doors for the last time. He becomes hellbent on finding those responsible for the robberies, but not in the way that you’d expect. Marcus doesn’t get upset when the rundown branches don’t have functional security cameras. When his witnesses don’t cooperate how he’d like them to, he tries to reason with them instead of threatening them. Once he identifies their pattern, he parks himself with Alberto at the next branch he expects them to hit. Why they don’t ask for backup is uncertain.

Hell or High Water is a smartly written movie by screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan earned an Academy Award nomination, one of four nominations that this movie received. None will win, but I felt this Best Original Screenplay nomination was the only one that deserved recognition. And it’s not because Hell or High Water was a bad movie; instead, it’s not an Oscar-contending movie. What I enjoyed most was its simplicity, tone, scenery, and characters. Aside from one scene that showed a cell phone late in the film, you couldn’t tell if this movie was set in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, or today. The clothes the characters wear are old.

hell or high water movie still

The vehicles look older. The towns are run down, and modern technology is not used. I think the cell phone scene was a mistake. It wasn’t needed at all and made the time in which this movie was set more concrete than ambiguous. I enjoyed the intelligent way that the brothers cleared the money. I enjoyed the car chase scenes. And I liked how it all came together in the end. And, while you do have to suspend your belief, it’s okay. It’s just that the pair seem to get away with many things pretty quickly when, with a little more investigation, the case facts would have been better stacked against them. The acting was good. It wasn’t great. Foster’s Tanner was a loose cannon and was the perfect complement to the more centered and rational Toby. Bridges’ idiosyncratic character added humor to the film, but it wasn’t one of the year’s five best supporting actor performances.

Of the nine movies nominated for Oscars, this was my least favorite. I would likely have watched it twice or reviewed it had it not received a nomination for Best Picture. That said, it’s a decent movie in a year full of good but only a few great movies. I appreciate movies like this. Unfortunately, the hype killed this movie. The 98% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes set unreasonable expectations for many film viewers and earned an audience that might only have seen it with this surprise Best Picture nomination.

Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 8/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 8/10
Screenplay 10/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 8.5/10
Hook and Reel 8.5/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
87%

B+

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