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.
