Hell or High Water

The Howard brothers, Tanner (Ben Foster) and Toby (Chris Pine), are robbing Texas Midlands Bank in order to raise funds to pay off the mortgage for the family ranch.  They need a little more than $40,000 to lift the lien on the property and rescue it from foreclosure.  Texas Rangers Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto (Gil Birmingham) get the case and start tracking the bank robbers.  Marcus has a keen mind and is able to discern much about them and eventually predict their next target.  Unlike most such movies, this one leaves a lot of loose ends, reminiscent of No Place for Old Men.  There are certainly some parallels with that film.

The movie feels like an old fashioned Western just set in modern times.  The fact that the robbers are in more gun battles with civilians than the police is very different from the usual crime drama.  Tanner notes that concealed carry laws make being a bank robber more difficult.  At times, this could be viewed as a pro-2nd Amendment film.  The impromptu posse of armed Texans who pursued the brothers out of town was humorous.  That everyone one of them drove a truck was also very Texan.  :)

The premise is thin.  If oil has been discovered on the ranch, why didn't the Howards just offer the first year of production to a driller who would pay off the lien?  In fact, the property value should have skyrocketed with the discovery of oil and refinancing based on that appreciation should have been an option.  There are constant hits against the banking industry as if the banks are robbing the people and the Howards are just balancing the scales.  The movie holds it as an undisputed fact that banks are out to steal from their customers and foreclose on their houses.  This shows a profound misunderstanding in how banks operate.  The movie feels like a depression era movie.  There are frequent debt relief billboards, rundown towns with closed stores, obviously struggling people, and talk of hard times.

The best part of the movie is the interaction of the characters.  The dialogue is great, the acting is strong, and even minor characters are compelling and memorable.  There was a refreshing bluntness to some of the characters.  Marcus is a constant jerk to his partner and yet it is clear that he holds him in high regard.  Toby's ex-wife feels no need to express anything but indifference when she hears that her mother-in-law died, telling a great deal about a relationship that is never shown on screen.  Tanner is a happy-go-lucky ex-con who is entirely comfortable with what the brothers are doing and fully expects to get caught.  Toby serves as a guardrail to his brother's recklessness, a mostly grim planner who, by contrast, seems to take no joy in anything.

 

The acting is great, particularly Bridges and Foster.  Jeff Bridges has the veteran lawman down to a T at this point.  Reminding me of his stint as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit a few years back, he plays a canny ranger with a sharp tongue.  Gil Birmingham is a great straight man and allows Bridges to shine even more brightly.  Every scene with Bridges is fun to watch.  Ben Foster was very like Emilio Estevez in Young Guns.  In past roles, he has always been this humorless stiff but here he is an easy-going charmer, a good ol' boy who might be friends with the Dukes of Hazzard.  Really, I would have expected him to play the role that Chris Pine had based on his films I have seen.  My opinion of him as an actor went way up.

Except for the silly premise, I enjoyed the film.  There is a lot here to like.  Thumbs up.