David Rooney

RIT DIRECTOR David Mackenzie follows his searing 2013 prison drama, Starred Up, with a deep dive into archetypal Americana in this modern western thriller that combines many of the same strengths as that earlier film.

Those notably include unsettling violence and textural grit coupled with compassionate insight, in a story that observes the behavioural codes of damaged men in a broken world. Sweaty performances, tight direction and evocative visuals keep the drama compelling.

Its best marketing assets will be the magnetic appeal of Chris Pine and Ben Foster, playing semiestranged brothers drawn together by pressing need, and a wonderful character turn from Jeff Bridges, delivering his most flavourful work since the Coen brothers’ True Grit.

The screenplay effectively juxtaposes two pairs of unlikely buddies. On the wrong side of the law are ex-convict siblings Toby (Pine) and Tanner (Foster), who grew up in poverty on a West Texas cattle ranch that’s been failing for as long as either of them can remember;

Tanner got out of prison a year earlier and remained absent throughout the difficult, slow death of their mother. On the side

Bof the badge are soon-to-retire Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Bridges) and his deputy Alberto (Gil Birmingham), who endures the bantering insults of his boss about his mixed Native AmericanMexican heritage, firing back with digs about the old dude’s creeping decrepitude.

It’s a story of cowboys and Indians; one-time kings of the plains now suspended in a place where both cowpoke and warrior have been pushed to nearextinction.

While Tanner was behind bars, the family ranch fell deeper