Hell or High Water

Cert: 15A. Now showing.

DAVID Mackenzie’s 2013 prison drama Starred Up was a reminder that on a good day, the Scottish director can do gritty but profoundly resonating action drama that stays in your system. For this neo-western, he teamed up with Sicario scribe Taylor Sheridan and cast young guns Chris Pine and Ben Foster beside elder guru Jeff Bridges. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis came in on soundtrack duties. Together, this dream team have delivered a certified modern classic.

Pine and Foster are Toby and Tanner, two bank-robbing brothers in dustbowl West Texas. They are on an intense 48-hour spree to relieve several banks of funds. Bridges is the grizzled Ranger Hamilton, on the eve of retirement and contemplating the winter of his years. The wise old goat needs one last rodeo and vows to bring the brothers in.

This so far sounds like your common or garden western but Hell or High Water is anything but ordinary. Around this central premise is a thematic tapestry that quietly brews away in the backdrop. Next to the idea that the unhinged jailbird Tanner and more sensible Toby have a noble family motive behind their deeds are issues of rural decline, the banking classes, Native American rights and casino culture, and gun-possession. There’s nostalgia for the good ol’ days when service was better, deputies smoked and the West was truly wild.

Always an actor of huge vitality, Foster gives a career best while Pine shows he’s far more than just a pretty face. The landscape belongs to Bridges, however. The veteran brings much sensitivity and nuance to such a trope character, and is mesmeric when quietly observed by Mackenzie’s masterful lens.