REACHING THE HIGH-WATER MARK
Pine, Bridges star in straightforward yet thrilling modern western
By the time we reach the climax of this smoking-modern western, the conclusion seems both tense and inevitable. It’s as if everyone in the movie decided simultaneously to pick up a gun and amble over to the O.K. Corral.
But a straightforward trip can still be a thrill; just ask any rollercoaster aficionado. Hell or High Water opens with a beautiful tracking shot that ends with two masked men holding up a tiny bank somewhere in West Texas; the first of several, it turns out.
They’re not the most prepossessing of robbers; “Y’all are new at this, aren’t you?” drawls the teller. Well, yes and no. Toby (Chris Pine) is an oil-rig worker whose only time in court was the day he got divorced. His big brother Tanner (Ben Foster) has already spent 10 years in prison and clearly gets a huge high out of this sort of thing.
Toby’s the reason they’re doing it, however. Thanks to a reverse mortgage taken out by their dying mother, he has to raise $40,000 or risk losing the family ranch, which has been left to his children. And the banks are the only ones with any money in this benighted, blasted landscape, a desert dotted with abandoned stores, debt-relief billboards, silent pumpjacks and brush fires no one can even be bothered to put out. The brothers arrive at one of their targets to find it shuttered; even financial institutions are going out of business here.
The complex, believable family dynamic between the siblings is almost enough to carry the whole movie. But following — moseying, actually — in their wake is Marcus Hamilton, a Texas Ranger played by Jeff Bridges, who puts on this character like it’s an old shoe. (His latest Oscar nomination was for playing the similar Rooster Cogburn in 2010’s True Grit.)
Marcus is on the cusp of retirement, which never bodes well for movie cops. His longsuffering partner is Alberto (Gil Birmingham), a Cherokee Indian at whom he throws an endless stream of affable racist putdowns. When Alberto reminds him that he’s also half-Mexican, Marcus replies that he’ll get to those insults in good time. The two cops spend most of the movie physically far from their quarry, though clever editing sometimes makes it seem as though they’re practically in the same room. And it’s clearly only a matter of time before Marcus’ finely honed cop instincts put them in actual contact.
There’s much to love in this film. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis provide a mournful score, and once again prove that the more dust there is in the picture, the better they sound; past credits include The Proposition, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and The Road. The cinematography is gorgeous, aided by the fact that Texas, not unlike Pine, looks good from any angle.
And characters don’t just speak; they have something to say, whether it’s Alberto’s philosophical musing about cultural displacement of one group by another, or a hilarious scene in which a diner waitress (88-yearold Margaret Bowman) barks at the cops: “What don’t you want?” Turns out she doesn’t take food orders; she gives them.
It’s all in the hands of British director David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Starred Up), working from a screenplay by Taylor Sheridan. Sheridan is a longtime actor whose first script was for Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario. He’s got two more in the works, one of which (Wind River) he’s also directing. I can’t wait to see them, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Hell or High Water is here now. Giddy up!