The Vault in Our Stars

As we come to the close of our crime block, examining the criminal protagonist and what makes them so appealing, I want to come back to what may be a forgotten gem (albeit, not quite hidden) about the perfect bank heist for just about the perfect reason—Spike Lee’s Inside Man.  That’s right, we’re going to rob a bank again, but this time, it’s not just for poetic justice.  The movie opens with an establishing montage over “Chaiyya Chaiyya”, from the well-known and well-loved Bollywood hit, Dil Se, reminding me of the time when the culture was obsessed with Indian music and you couldn’t go more than five minutes without hearing Jay-Z and Punjabi MC over a Bollywood beat.  It also has Clive Owen (Children of Men, Gosford Park) explaining to you, the viewer, how he’s about to pull off the perfect robbery.  Pretty bold stuff, he even tells you his name, Dalton Russell.  I always thought you’re supposed to hide your identity when committing crimes, but what do I know?

We then move to a serene and ornate bank, back in the time when people still had to go to banks, just sitting there, like low-hanging fruit, just ready to be picked.  The robbers, dressed as painters, come in, disable the cameras, and proceed to do the bank robber thing.  Fire the gun in the air, tell everyone to get down, give up their phones, don’t look at their faces, and then, uncharacteristically of many a bank robbery (at least in movies), strip and put on a bunch of matching jumpsuits and masks.  The plan is brilliant—obfuscate everyone’s identity, so that not just the cops, but even the hostages themselves are unable to tell who is who.  What becomes a merry-go-round of confusion is a cover for a brilliant, meticulously planned heist, while a troubled detective and a SWAT team with itchy trigger fingers sit outside, trying to figure out what to do.  While Dalton plays a hostage shell game, the police are forced to sit outside and twiddle their thumbs, waiting for Dalton to make a wrong move.  And as the film progresses, you get the feeling that Dalton isn’t the kind of guy who makes wrong moves.

And here lies the absolute brilliance of Inside Man.  It’s not that the heist is brilliant, even though it is, it’s not that the perpetrator is charismatic and likable, even though he is, it’s that Spike Lee turns the whole thing on its head.  Normally, you wouldn’t side with hostage takers.  Normally, you wouldn’t want the people robbing the bank to win.  Normally, you’d root for the de facto heroes to be the ones who swoop in to save the day.  But in this world, the de facto heroes are cops and anything but and Spike Lee is keen to point that out with just enough subtlety so as not to beat you over the head with it.  This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen the movie, but like the man who is changed the next time he walks into a river, every time you rewatch a movie, you approach it as a different person, with different experiences, and different perspectives.  And I’ve noticed that since I started watching movies with pen in hand for this blog, I see so much more that I’m able to analyze (and sometimes overanalyze, I’m sure).  And Inside Man is no different; Lee makes sure that even though the detectives we’re inclined to side with—Keith Frazier, played by Denzel Washington (Training Day, Fences), and Bill Mitchell, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men, Dr. Strange)—are the more honest type, they have allegations hanging over them, particularly Frazier.  Someone claims he’s responsible for $140,000 going missing from a bust and, while he proclaims his innocence and we’re inclined to believe him, he has no better explanation than the criminal accusing him is a liar—a refrain we’ve heard all too often about those attempting to expose the crimes of those in power (even if the power they wield is as little as an NYPD detective third grade).

And despite both Frazier and Mitchell being Black, the rest of the cops are just racist enough so as to make it obvious, but not so obvious that you can’t miss it if you’re not paying attention.  Maybe you’re just used to it and jaded or you’ve simply come to expect it, but it’s there for a reason.  People are referred to using derogatory racial epithets, one beat cop catches himself about to describe a suspect with the N-word to Frazier, they rough up a Sikh and treat him like a terrorist, even taking his turban, which is a very important part of his religion.  All this is in pursuit of showing you, the audience, that the police here are not the protagonists—not the main ones, anyway.  Dalton and his merry band of bank robbers are indeed the protagonists of the film, and they’re not altruists either.  But in an imperfect world, demanding perfection from your heroes is the path to ruin and disappointment every time.  As Dalton explains, he’s definitely in it for the money, but that the money isn’t worth much if he can’t face himself in the mirror.  If only more people had that level of integrity and self awareness.  Yes, I’m aware I’m saying this about a man who walked into a bank, fired a revolver in the air, and forced people to experience the scariest day of their lives.  He also resorts to violence on more than one occasion.  So, maybe don’t put a poster of him on your wall, but it’s still okay to root for him.  The police, even our secondary protagonists Frazier and Mitchell, lack this self awareness to varying degrees, and this is what makes the movie work so well.  SWAT captain John Darius, played by the always fantastic Willem Dafoe (John Wick, Platoon) definitely lacks this, just waiting for a reason to send his men in and settle the issue with extreme finality.  Everyone has a trigger and someone is always ready to pull it at a moment’s notice for their own benefit.

Enter power broker Madeleine White, played by Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs), who is called in by the bank owner Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer, Knives Out) who wants her to come in and settle the issue her way—quickly and quietly, by wielding power and influence with some of New York’s most powerful and influential.  Oh, the back room deals she’s been involved with, that would be quite a story indeed.  Of course, you don’t get to the position she’s in without being incredibly intelligent and a keen reader of people, so she intuits immediately that the reason she’s being asked to take care of this is because there’s something either so incredibly embarrassing or so incredibly sensitive that Case doesn’t want it getting into anyone’s hands, whether they be the criminals’ hands—or the cops’.  After all, a bank robbery in the news deosn’t usually turn people against the bank; they look at the bank and its employees and the hostages as victims, garnering sympathy and thoughts and prayers.  Suffice it to say, the thing he’s hiding is beyond incriminating (in the world of 2006, anyway; now, I’m not so sure) and he’s keen to never let it see the light of day.  It’s at this point that White starts working her magic behind the scenes, even getting a face to masked face with Dalton after leaning on the mayor to get her in.  It’s quite the scene.

What Spike Lee pulls off with Inside Man is similar to what Rian Johnson pulls off with Knives Out and Glass Onion.  He doesn’t play hide the ball, he puts it all up front, cards on the table, face up, and still somehow you’re surprised when it plays out exactly the way he tells you it’s going to play out.  It’s a hell of a feat as a director and very impressive by all involved.  In an age where movies are increasingly reliant on CGI, big set pieces, and wild, unearned plot twists in an attempt to engage and/or fool the audience, it’s so refreshing just to see good, strong narrative storytelling that tracks from start to finish and still keeps you guessing without ever feeling cheap or manipulative.  Dalton is completely upfront with the viewer—and even the police—about his plans and yet he’s still able to pull them off in the most satisfying way.

And like I said earlier, it’s not his brilliance that makes you like him and root for him.  It’s the motivation behind the crime.  I won’t tell you what it is, of course, because that’s something you should see for the first time on screen and experience it for yourself.  Of course, banks have a lot of money and that’s not a bad reason for someone to rob them—after all, in Hell or High Water, the motives were straightforward and the method simple, but you still rooted for them, and that’s because of the why.  Dalton shows you who he is time and time again—for example, when taking phones from everyone, he lets the one child in the bank keep his handheld gaming system, a Sony PSP (perhaps dating the film even more than the prevalence of flip phones), and when he sees the game the kid is playing, he says he’s going to have a word with his father.  Not being awful to kids is a low bar, but these days, so many people fail to make it over it and stumble, at best, that seeing this violent criminal show kindness and concern for his child hostage is immediately endearing.  And when you finally learn the true motivation behind the bank robbery, you are completely on his side.  Even if the cops weren’t awful and trying so very hard to hide their racist and authoritative ways, you’d still be on Dalton’s side.  That is how noble his cause is.  Yes, he will make a lot of money doing this, but in doing so, he will also further the cause of justice.  In some ways, that doesn’t make him too different from our blind lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen, but not quite the same. All evil deeds are found out, after all, because they stink—as much as you try to cover them up, the smell never truly goes away.  I do so hope that’s true.

I wanted to end the crime block with this movie because of Dalton Russell—because he’s such an easy protagonist to get behind.  He exemplifies why criminal protagonists are so compelling; arrogant, but with cause, charismatic and likable, and doing it for the right reasons.  He’s motivated by money, sure, but not by greed, unlike some of the other characters in the movie who would be victims or protagonists in another film.  It is a fine line to toe and here Spike Lee has Clive Owen not just toeing it, but dancing on it, doing the full plié.  At 2 hours and 9 minutes, it’s not exactly a breezy film, but it’s not bloated.  It’s another movie where just about every scene serves a purpose.  It’s not the perfectly crafted Late Night with the Devil, where every minute detail is there for a reason, but it is very well done, managing an 86% RT score with an 85% audience score as well.  I hope this look at criminal protagonists has been interesting and, above all else, fun for you.  I will be returning to the regularly scheduled eclectic programming from here, at least for the time being, and to a weekly release.  I’m sorry for the unplanned hiatus, I was dealing with some illness in the family; not to worry, we’re all fine now and thank you to everyone who reached out to me over the last three weeks, I really appreciate it.  And more than anything, I appreciate all of you who read this plucky little one man show. More to come!

Also, I would like to take a moment to wish all in the LGBTQ+ community a safe and happy Pride Month! The world is a better place with you in it and I strive to make this blog a place where people of all genders and all orientations are and feel welcome. Art is for everyone and discussions about art should include everyone as well.

Con Baby Con

One of the things I really love about this blog is bringing hidden gems to people that they might not have heard of before or that maybe didn’t have mass appeal, but might resonate with certain audiences.  And here, in the middle of my crime block, I get to do just that with 2008’s The Brothers Bloom.  Rian Johnson’s follow-up to his excellent debut film Brick, a neo-noir mystery set in a high school, Johnson again plays with genre and setting in this underrated con man flick.

Starring the always likable Adrien Brody as Bloom and always angry Mark Ruffalo as Stephen, they play orphaned brothers who developed confidence schemes after bouncing around from foster home to foster home.  Stephen is the mastermind, writing richly detailed stories and characters for them to act out, so that by the end of it the people they conned not only don’t know they’ve been conned, they walk away happy, feeling like they got what they wanted the whole time, never even questioning the outcome.  Along for the ride is the mysterious Bang Bang, played by Rinko Kikuchi, in a nearly silent role, but one pivotal to the story as Stephen’s right hand, the quiet glue that keeps everything together (and occasionally blows it apart using high explosives).

Growing disillusioned with the lifestyle, Bloom tells Stephen that he wants out—a conversation they’ve had many times before, so much so that Stephen knows it word for word, but Stephen works very hard to keep him in the game.  Resentment grows in Bloom, he wants a life where he is himself; he’s become tired of living a life written by Stephen, constantly playing his characters.  Bloom wants an unwritten life, and who can’t identify with that?

Normally, Stephen is able to talk Bloom down, but this time, Bloom says he’s walking away for real and he does just that.  Some time passes, but Stephen and Bang Bang track him down and, with how these things go, they convince him to head to New Jersey for one last score.  They scope out the mark, to use the parlance, a reclusive heiress.  Not quite a shut-in, but also not what I’d call socially adept, she lives on her own in a mansion and constantly drives her Lamborghini into things.  Penelope, played by the immensely talented Rachel Weisz, shows off so much charm and quirkiness that you instantly like her; despite the attention-grabbing bright yellow supercar, she is essentially solitary.  She doesn’t appear to have any friends, no job or need for a job—no one in her life at all.  The perfect person to set up, really.  And that they do, using the tried-and-true method of getting them to hit you with their car so they are sympathetic to you.  As always, it’s Bloom who takes the hit while Stephen orchestrates the whole scheme in the background.

Now, as you can imagine, things don’t go exactly as planned—if they do, there’s no movie, so such is the way of any confidence scheme movie (or indeed, most crime films), a thing or series of things go wrong and forces our protagonists to improvise.  In any case, they whisk Penelope off on a luxurious steamboat trip around the world, but only after planting the seed that it’s something she wants to do, long con style.  She’s basically led the life of a monk (minus the asceticism; her money precludes her from ever suffering from need, so instead of having a quiet life of reflection, she “collects hobbies” instead of participating in life the way most people do), so the prospect of going on a globetrotting adventure is too much temptation for her to bear and she shows up at the dock with her luggage ready to go.  And an adventure she has, meticulously written and constructed by Stephen.  To complicate things, though, Bloom starts to develop feelings for Penelope and Penelope for Bloom in return.  Falling for the mark is the conman version of getting high on your own supply, I suppose; the cardinal sin, the ultimate faux pas, the major bummer of the profession.

There’s not a lot new here; as much as I enjoyed this movie, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel.  One of Rian Johnson’s strengths, however, is his iteration on genre tropes—that is, his execution of the film can be more important than the kernel idea from which the film grew.  In that way, he builds a better wheel.  He’s an expert at subverting expectations and while The Brothers Bloom could be knocked for being overly complicated, I think it fits Stephen’s character to write incredibly elaborate cons in order to not just successfully get away with it, but also to satisfy his own desires for adventure, control, and perhaps even a sort god complex.  Growing up the way he did, I can understand why he feels the need to not just control the circumstances surrounding him, but to create them.  Conman movies tend to go one of just a handful of ways and The Brothers Bloom is no different in that regard.  But it is how well it’s executed that sets it apart from movies that could feel trite in the hands of a less talented director.  The visuals of this movie, much like Stephen’s cons, are very thoughtfully and elaborately constructed as well.  There were so many times when I found the composition of the shots stunning, and maybe it’s partly because I’m a big Rian Johnson fan (he’s never let me down as a director, which I can’t say about even my other favorite auteurs like Denis Villenueve and Christopher Nolan), but when he helms a movie, I can feel it.  Even here, where he’s still young in his career and feeling out his own style, you can see how he sculpted his influences and became the filmmaker he is today.

We don’t have movies like Knives Out and The Glass Onion without Brick and The Brothers Bloom, and that would be a damn shame.  The DNA of Rian Johnson’s later films is all here, just not as refined and perhaps not as confident to take big swings, but it’s all there.  Brick relied on noir detective conventions for its adolescent private detective and The Brothers Bloom shows Johnson’s admiration for Wes Anderson’s style.  Indeed, on first blush, you’d be excused for thinking you were watching a Wes Anderson movie—the costuming is not exactly contemporary, they go on a steamer ship instead of taking a plane, they’re in rustic and idyllic European towns for the majority of the film, and there’s plenty of quirkiness on display.  In fact, I wasn’t sure that the movie wasn’t intended to be a period piece until Penelope showed up in her Lamborghini Murciélago, definitely contemporary to the time the movie was made.  The inclusion of Wes Anderson mainstay Adrien Brody felt almost like an intentional homage to the distinct director, as Brody shows up in just about every Wes Anderson movie I’ve seen.  But I don’t take this as a weakness of the film; I know as a writer, when I go back to my early works, I see the influences of the authors I was obsessed with at the time, namely Vonnegut and a little Hemingway, as I slowly developed my own style that owes something to my influences without feeling like a copy of them.  And this is what I see in The Brothers Bloom; a young filmmaker making a movie that honors the directors he admires while doing his own thing with the way they influenced him.

As great as Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz are here, it really is Adrien Brody that makes this film.  His performance is a true standout in a movie where the other actors are the ones dropping the more poignant and memorable lines (particularly Rachel Weisz), but his talent to be convincingly exasperated, bemused, and relatable all at the same time is on full display.  The movie—and Brody’s performance as Bloom in particular—speaks strongly to the fear that we don’t really know who we are, that we are just pretending to be who we think we’re supposed to be.  That we’re all just playing a part written for us by someone else and our place in the world is prescribed by others.  It makes us wonder what it would mean to step out of the role that society, our families, and other outside forces have coerced us into playing.  In a world where so many of our virtual interactions are fake—bots on Twitter, propaganda and disinformation on TV, social media influencers showing us carefully curated stills from an existence as manufactured as one of Stephen’s cons, do we even know how to be real anymore?  Do we even know what’s real anymore?  Of course, the movie couldn’t have been written with that in mind—in 2008, Facebook and Twitter were still in their infancy and Instagram was still just an idea.  But Bloom’s situation feels more relevant now than it was when the movie came out.  It’s not just our personal insecurities now, it’s our entire world that’s in question.

Bloom shows us that sometimes learning to be yourself is an act of courage.  And sometimes an act of courage, even in a fake world, can be very real.

Like every great comedy, like every great piece of literature, really, there is a stream of sadness that runs through it.  The best comedies give us laughs through the sadness and that’s what makes them great instead of just silly fun—not that silly fun is bad, you need that too, but it’s sadness that elevates a comedy.  Fleabag, Lodge 49, Safety Not Guaranteed, etc. are all comedies that really prove that and while The Brothers Bloom may not hit that upper echelon of comedic cinematic literature the way those do, it’s not too far off, and it’s Bloom’s sadness and malaise that push it so close.  Because life is full of sadness, it’s full of loneliness, it’s full of disappointment, but it’s through all that where we find joy—it’s why every laugh means so much, why a genuine smile feels so good, why finding a connection with another person is so meaningful.  The Brothers Bloom is a wonderful movie where nothing is real but the stories we tell and the beauty we find in the world between endings.  Streaming on Peacock, Prime Video, Tubi, and Pluto TV, The Brothers Bloom is 1 hour and 54 minutes well spent.  Like the uplifting Be Kind Rewind, don’t let the 68% RT score keep you away; it may not be for everyone, but this is one hidden gem that deserves a chance to con its way into your heart.

Lone Wolf and Stub: Thunderbolts*

“How was it?”

A question I was asked as I was leaving Marvel’s new movie, Thunderbolts*, which took me back.  Not only to a time when I was going to the theaters more often, but also to a time when movies were events; like waiting in line for the midnight showing of The Fellowship of the Ring or dinner with friends before heading to see The Dark Knight.  My response to the question was simple.  “Excellent,” I said, giving him a thumbs up. No spoilers ahead, so read with confidence.

There was so much more I wanted to say.  It was excellent; a throwback to the heyday of the MCU in such a good way, and if, like me, you saw the Super Bowl teaser and hit the eject button, it was a seriously pleasant surprise.  It had a level of depth that has been missing from MCU films in the past few years; the failure of the MCU to connect on an emotional level has hurt not just Marvel, but even secondary Marvel endeavors have suffered as a result.  LEGO, which has been making licensed Marvel sets for years, has reported a noticeable drop in sales partly due to the waning popularity of the MCU movies and Disney+ series.

I don’t want to be overly enthusiastic here, because expectation is the seed of disappointment, but Thunderbolts* is a movie that has moved on from the paint by numbers, pure setup for the next movie formula that has plagued Marvel since Endgame, and has returned to a focus on storytelling.  It’s not perfect, of course, no Marvel movie has been (since Winter Soldier, anyway), but it was emotionally engaging, well acted, and still fun to watch while feeling meaningful.  Most people have praised Florence Pugh’s performance and I will be no different, as it’s her heart that carries this movie on its shoulders (I’m not sure that’s anatomically correct, but there you have it), however that doesn’t mean that the rest of the cast isn’t excellent as well.  Sebastian Stan puts in a typically strong performance as Bucky, and perhaps the surprise of the movie is Wyatt Russell as John Walker. Russell is an actor I adore so much because of his role in Lodge 49 (the best show you’ve never seen), for him to make me dislike him as I did in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and this is seriously impressive.  Every time I saw him, I just thought “Oh, Dud, how did you turn into this?”  No one is surprised when Florence Pugh puts in a great performance, she’s a fantastic actress, but everyone here gave it their all and it came through in the final product.

Movies are terribly expensive these days, I know my ticket was almost $20, so taking a family or a date can definitely add up quickly.  But, if you’re a fan of superhero movies, this is one I definitely recommend you go see if you can.  Don’t watch any sneak previews, don’t dive into fan theories, don’t even look up the comic on which it’s based.  Just go see it; I went in cold, having only the slightest idea of what the Thunderbolts comic was about and having seen almost nothing about the movie.  And that made the experience so much better.

The larger picture here is that I’m beginning to feel like movies could be coming back.  In a time when streaming CEOs are claiming that streamers are the way we want to watch movies, I am personally dying for a reason to go back to the theaters.  I live in my home, it’s nice to leave it every once in a while for a reason other than I have to.  There’s still something to the magic of movie theaters; this was only the second time since the pandemic that I’ve been back (Sonic 3 over the holidays) and it was a delight to be back in those seats, in that dark room, with a handful of strangers all there for the same reason.  A solo trip to the movies is something most people avoid, but I absolutely love it.  It wasn’t a packed house, but I chose my showtime specifically to avoid one; there were still enough people there to have a shared experience, to have a moment in time when I could put my phone away and just do one thing.  And that one thing was watch a very good movie, one of the things I love to do most.   We’re inundated these days; yes, we have responsibilities—work, kids, etc.—but we also do it to ourselves, sometimes out of habit.  I can’t tell you how many times I pick up my phone to check something, get distracted by some alert or another, and forget why I picked it up in the first place.  Streaming services are convenient, but not my preferred way to watch a movie.  Yes, they’re very practical, but when was the last time you got excited by something practical?  I know it’s expensive, I know it’s inconvenient, I know it takes something special to get us back out to the theaters.  But if Thunderbolts* is any indication—along with the promising looking Fantastic Four trailer—Marvel might be back on track to giving us those special reasons to go back to the celluloid cathedrals.

I’m hoping to get out to the theaters more often and to give you more of these short, bonus impressions in this new “Lone Wolf and Stub” series.  Regular coverage will resume this week, as we continue our look into crime films.  As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll be back soon.

Three to Five Bank Robberies Outside Dallas, Texas

If you read last week’s installment in this crime block, you know that I like to know how we got to a place before I talk about where we’re going or where we are.  And since we’re talking about crime films and protagonist criminals, I want to acknowledge the outlaw of the old west.  Sure, there were shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza, about a federal marshal trying to keep Dodge City in line and a benevolent, well meaning, rich family just sort of doing their thing, but the gunslinger and the outlaw have been America’s samurai, its ronin, beholden to no one, but somehow, usually, still doing good along the way (The Magnificent Seven is a perfect example of this, adapting Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai directly and cementing this notion).  Not always, of course, there is also the depiction of the amoral west and the depraved outlaw, like Sam Peckinpagh’s The Wild Bunch, without which we wouldn’t have games like Red Dead Redemption, I’m sure.  But I don’t want to go back to the old west, I don’t want to talk about the amoral outlaw.  I want to talk about the thing that makes outlaws, thieves, and bank robbers easier to root for than those on the default side of right (the ones upholding the law, of course; our antagonists, the police).

Released in 2016, Hell or High Water (streaming on Paramount+) is as relevant now as it was then, unfortunately for us.  But fortunately for us, it is Taylor Sheridan’s brilliant shining gem as a writer.  One year after he wrote Sicario, which blew me away the first time I saw it, High Water came out with his byline again.  Now, instead of being in the hands of masterful auteur Denis Villenueve, the director is David Mackenzie, a name I’d not heard before and have not again since, but boy did he do an incredible job with this.  And yet, despite what Taylor Sheridan’s brand has come to mean, this combination was a surprising and incredible marriage of talent; not just these two, but everyone involved.

We open on a dusty old Camaro stalking the empty streets of a vacant desert town in the early morning.  Not a particularly menacing or worrying sight, I’m sure it happens everyday in almost every town across the world, but in this case, you’re immediately put on edge by the film’s score, written by Nick Cave’s red right hand, and we see what they’re up to.  They pull into the parking lot of a branch of Texas Midlands Bank before they open and ambush the first employee who shows up.  It’s a bank robbery, naturally.  It’s hardly a professional job that goes off without a hitch, but it’s successful nonetheless and no one got seriously hurt.  Our two robbers rush off to another Texas Midlands branch to hit it before it gets too busy.  They go for small bills only, nothing bigger than a $20, and only from the drawers.  It’s clear that they’re going for quick over a big payday.  These are not elaborate heists where they hold people hostage and drill the vault to fund a lavish lifestyle.  In fact, when we see them dump the getaway car in a large pit and cover it with dirt, you see that they’re not living it up, in fact they’re fairly poverty-stricken and the few thousand they’re pulling from cash drawers seems more likely to be spent on groceries than to be tucked into a g-string or turned into snortable powder.  We also learn that this pair is made up of two brothers—Tanner, the elder ex-con, played by Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma, Big Trouble) and Toby, played by Chris Pine (the second best Chris; Star Trek, Dungeons & Dragons) the younger.  They’re reeling from their mother’s recent passing; well, at least Toby is.  We see the equipment in her bedroom and it’s a reminder that dying slowly in America is an expensive endeavor.  Tanner wasn’t around; his relationship with his mother strained, in his estimation, because he always stood up to his abusive father, which in turn made him more abusive to the entire family (which I’m sure he blamed on his victims, as is the way of abusers).  One “hunting accident” later and Tanner took the father out of the picture, but he and his mother never seemed to get on and Tanner led a troubled life, including a stint in prison for assault.  Toby, on the other hand, though he’s down on himself, kept his head down.  Divorced with two sons, Toby has at least kept his nose clean as far as the law is concerned, but his family is estranged from him and he is absent from their lives and delinquent in his child support payments.

In come the literal white hats, in the form of past it veteran Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton, played by Jeff Bridges (Tron: Legacy, The Big Lebowski), and his partner Alberto Parker, played by Sheridanverse regular Gil Birmingham (Wind River, Yellowstone).  Hamilton clocks it as a well thought out robbery and figures that they’re building up to a specific amount for a purpose.  At first blush, it seems almost too much for one guy to figure out at one crime scene, but as an audience, we’re led to understand that Marcus, on the verge of retirement, is a talented and experienced investigator with strong instincts for this sort of thing.  Something that I think is important to note is that even though the Rangers here are the antagonists and that the film is very clear that we’re not meant to root for the “good guys” to get their man in the end, but rather that the bank robbers are our heroes, they are not the villains.  Indeed, in a way, none of the characters on screen, the walking, talking people who make up the film are the villains.  It’s not that there isn’t a villain, because there most certainly is, and it’s not an atmospheric, nebulous villain either.  Though the times are hard for everyone, it’s not just the economic situation as a whole that’s the problem.  It is something specific.  It’s concrete, it’s bricks and mortar, it has a website.

I love this script.  I’m a writer, so obviously I’m biased towards the written and spoken word, and there is something special about the writing here.  This is when Taylor Sheridan was at his very best—it’s honestly hard to believe that the same person who wrote Hell or High Water is actually the same person who would go on to subject us to the wildly popular dumpster fire of boomer-fodder that is Yellowstone; unlike that show, which feels mostly made for white dads who miss when phones were just phones and plugged into the wall, High Water has a social conscientious to it that is informed by its western roots.  There are moments that if they were in lesser movies would feel like they were hitting you over the head with the point, but with this direction, this level of acting, and this sharp a script, it feels like natural conversations people have about the world around them.  There are moments that are laugh out loud funny, there are moments that are poignant and cutting, there are lines that feel lifted from the days of Sergio Leone spaghetti western, but they always feel good and right in the moment.  As Alberto and Marcus stake out a bank, they muse about the prospects of the people living in that particular dusty, dying rural town.  Alberto, who is half Mexican and half Native American, says to Marcus “[a] long time ago, your ancestors was [sic] the Indians, until someone came along and killed them, broke them down, and made you into one of them.  150 years ago, all this was my ancestors’ land”, but then the white people came and took it by force.  And now those people’s descendants are having their land taken from them, but not by force.  By banks and corporations, just like the one they’re staked out in front of, trying to protect them and their federally insured money.  Katy Mixon (American Housewife) has a small role as a waitress who receives a $200 tip from Toby and refuses to give it up as evidence—it’s half her mortgage, she says, it’s the roof over her daughter’s head.  There is nothing glamorous about this film and the words people speak tell that to you strongly and convincingly.

But the script isn’t the only piece of the pie here.  Put your phone away when you watch this and keep your eyes on the screen, because the visual storytelling is top notch.  It’s slightly subtle, but when you see those atmospheric shots as the brothers or the Rangers are driving along, your eyes can drink in the troubles of the people there.  The foreclosure signs, the debt consolidation billboards, the cash for gold advertisements; the movie quietly shows you what people are going through, and as they drive from dying town to dying town, you see the lengths that some people go to make money off that suffering.  At the diner where Katy Mixon works, there is a group of men sitting in a booth who have been there all day—and the impression that I get is that they sit there all day, everyday, because they don’t have anywhere else to be.  Everywhere you go, in just about every shot of the movie, you can see that people are struggling to make ends meet.  Which makes bank robbery seem like a viable career choice, even if the point here isn’t to get rich, at least not directly.  There’s something very poetic about what Toby and Tanner are doing.

And that brings me to what makes this movie so head and shoulders above many modern westerns, beyond the script or the visual storytelling—the characters.  Toby is relatively clear-headed and moral, despite the choices he makes.  He’s also self aware, something that a lot of people could stand to learn to be.  When he sits with his 14 year old son, after offering him a beer that he refuses, he gives him some life advice.  He tells him that people are going to say things about him, and when his son protests that he won’t believe what they say, he cuts him off.  He says to believe it all, because it’s probably true, and that his son shouldn’t be like him.  Toby wants his son to use him as an example of what not to do, something his father would never have said to him.  Toby is a highly sympathetic character, someone who wants to accomplish simply what he set out to do, and even though it’s a dangerous plan, he’s determined to ensure that no one gets hurt.  Tanner, on the other hand, is impulsive, violent, and hot-headed.  He’s got a record, he fancies himself as a modern day Comanche, enemy of everyone, lord of the plains, a man yearning to be free in a society that wants to and has incarcerated him for not following their rules.  He’s calm until he’s not, sitting in a gas station and responding to threats in the coolest and most quotable fashion I’ve ever seen, and then moments later, he’s pistol-whipping bank tellers for no good reason.  But he still finds a way to endear himself to you, despite his cynicism and pessimism.  As he talks to Toby about the plan, it becomes clear that he thinks they’ll fail; that they’ll either not get the money they need or more likely, in a West Texas where just about everyone has a gun and fantasizes about stopping an outlaw like John Wayne, die in the process.  When Toby pushes him on why he agreed to go along with the plan, he simply says “because you asked, little brother”—with every trouble he’s seen, with every trouble he’s caused, when his brother needed him, there was nothing he would let get in the way.  Before they gear up for the final push, the brothers share a very brotherly moment, drinking a beer and roughhousing together, the way they probably did as kids.  It’s a tender moment that sticks with you, with barely a word said.  Even Marcus, with his casual racism and Rooster Cogburn drawl, and Alberto, with his constant teasing of over-the-hill Marcus are likable characters.  You watch it hoping that Toby and Tanner win, but not necessarily hoping that Marcus and Alberto will lose.

Hell or High Water is a special kind of movie; it’s not just a crime film, it’s not just a modern western, it’s a picture of the end of things.  The end of a time, the end of the small town, maybe even the end of the idea of attainable American prosperity.  Taylor Sheridan may be a name that now leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of his problematic succeeding works that dominate my Paramount+ home screen, but he certainly wrote some fantastic movies prior to that and Hell or High Water is one of them, alongside Sicario and Wind River.  There’s so much in this movie that I want to talk about, but I don’t want to ruin any of the moments that you deserve to experience for yourself.   The movie is smartly written, well shot, and well paced; at 1 hour, 42 minutes, it’s almost breathless in its execution, taking only the necessary breaks and wasting none of them.  It’s a movie that reminds us of the power of film to tell stories and it shows how, when faced with a broken system, one where the odds are stacked against you, where playing by the rules can leave you and your family destitute for generations, an outlaw can be the protagonist you need to see.