Comancheria

Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine put on an acting clinic.

Bridges at 66 has enough swagger, 'tude and testosterone to be an action figure.

Pine, always reliable as a A-lister, takes his craft to a whole new level. He is as far from Captain Kirk as the earth is from the moon. Superb work. And unforgettable.

The script is to die for. Intelligent to a degree that makes you wonder aloud how the constant stream of B and C movies out of Hollywood ever get funded. Solid from the first line of dialog to the last.

West Texas is the unbilled co-star. You feel like you are there.

One of the best releases of the year.

((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

In a summer (or should that be year or decade) of vapid sequels, remakes, and overblown superhero catastrophes, who would have expected an entertaining, intelligent, well-crafted, suspenseful, character- driven, modern-day western with a brain. Riding on Taylor Sheridan's razor-sharp script and David Mackenzie's nuanced direction, Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, and (especially) Ben Foster (along with everyone else who appears on the screen) inhabit this film as wryly humorous, heartfelt, vicious, painfully tragic, and realistic members of a society reaping the fruits it has tragically sown. Best film so far this year.

Bank robberies have been featured in many hundreds of films since the early days of cinema: The Great Train Robbery for example dates back to 1903! More recent heist classics such as "Oceans 11", "Die Hard", "Run Lola Run" and "The Dark Knight Rises" tend towards the stylised end of the act. Where this film delivers interest is in aligning the protagonists' drivers with the banking and mortgage 'crimes' featured in last year's "The Big Short". Add in to the movie Nutribullet a soupçon of the West Texan setting from Arthur Penn's 1967 "Bonnie and Clyde", turn it on and you have "Hell or High Water".

Chris Pine ("Star Trek") and Ben Foster ("Inferno", "The Program") play brothers Toby and Tanner Howard trying to rescue their deceased mother's ranch from being foreclosed on by Texas Midlands bank. Rather than taking one of the "get out of debt" offers advertised on billboards – cleverly and insistently introduced in long panning highway shots – the brothers have their own financial plan: a scheme that involves early morning raids of the cash drawers of small-town Texas Midlands branches. But the meticulous planning of Toby, as the calm and intelligent one, are constantly at risk of upset by the unpredictable and violent actions of the loose-cannon Tanner.

Since the amounts of cash stolen are in the thousands rather than the millions, the FBI aren't interested and the case is handed instead by aged and grumpy Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges, "True Grit") and his partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham). The pair have a respectful relationship but one built around racial banter, with Hamilton constantly referring to Alberto's Mexican/Comanche heritage. A cat and mouse game ensues with the lawmen staking out the most likely next hits. The sonorous cello strings of the soundtrack portend a dramatic finale, and we as viewers are not disappointed.

The performances of the main leads are all excellent, with Chris Pine given the chance to show more acting chops than he has had chance to with his previous Kirk/Jack Ryan characters. His chemistry with Ben Foster is just sublime. Similarly, Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham make for a formidable double act. It is Jeff Bridges though who has the standout performance and one that is Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actor. (In fact with Michael Shannon also getting nominated in the same category for "Nocturnal Animals", we can add 'West Texan lawman' to 'Holocaust movies' (a Winslet "Extras" reference there!) as the prime bait for Oscar nomination glory!)

The real winner here though is the whip-smart screenplay by Taylor Sheridan ("Sicario") which sizzles with great lines: lines that make you grin inanely at the screen regularly through the running time."In your last days in the nursing home, you'll think of me and giggle" schmoozes Tanner to the pretty hotel check-in girl: a come-on clearly worth remembering as it delivers the goods, as it were.

The trick here is in building up a degree of empathy and sympathy for the characters on both sides. The 'bad guys' here are successfully portrayed as the banks. Before the 2017 awards, you could get 25/1 odds on this winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar – but I would personally rate it right up there with "Manchester by the Sea".

Deftly directed by Scot David Mackenzie ("Starred Up") this is a film (the first of two!) that might well have elbowed it's way into my Top 10 of 2016 if I'd seen it during its cinema release. Well worth catching on the small screen.

(For the graphical version of this review, please visit bob-the- movie-man.com).

In a year when the quality of life in middle America small towns has come back into focus, "Hell or High Water" feels like an important film, perhaps more important than it might have been had it been released prior to 2016. But it's not just timeliness that makes this a good movie. There are strong performances and strong writing Taylor Sheridan, someone we should definitely be paying more attention.

The "Sicario" writer returns with another tale set near the U.S.-Mexico border, this one following two poor West Texas brothers, Tanner and Toby Howard, one an ex-con (Ben Foster) and the other a divorced father of two (Chris Pine), who start robbing banks for petty cash. Their objective is to make enough money to pay off the bank before it forecloses on their recently deceased mother's ranch, which she willed to her grandsons. The property also happens to be sitting on enough oil to guarantee the boys' future.

With the stolen amounts too small to warrant attention from the FBI, a nearly retired Texas Ranger named Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and his partner, Alberto (Gil Birmingham), are assigned to track down the robbers and the cat-and-mouse game begins.

The characters could be distilled to two outlaw anti-heroes and the ranger on their tail who is about to hang it all up, but Sheridan's script evolves beyond the archetypes and into complicated, ugly territory, which is exactly where he took 2015's "Sicario." Whereas most cops-and-robbers stories have clear good guys and bad guys, this one doesn't.

Foster's Tanner is the wild one who can take things too far and lacks a moral compass, but he's fiercely loyal and devoted to his brother. Pine's Toby seems good through and through, but he has a violent streak and their whole illegal scheme is his idea. Even Bridges' smart, shiny-badged old ranger has a slightly bigoted attitude that often expresses itself to his half-Mexican, half-Native American partner.

All this "gray" makes watching how "Hell or High Water" plays out all the more interesting. We find ourselves rooting for the brothers' success only to have Sheridan execute some jarring turns in the story. Suddenly the stakes get higher and more real, and director David Mackenzie wisely keeps his hands off it all, which actually adds to the shock factor. We never feel comfortable with the violence in the film because it never feels stylish and never becomes commonplace, and that makes the violence that does happen more effective.

There's also a social commentary at play beneath the main thrust of the narrative, which is what really makes Sheridan's work stand out. Race crops up at various points, sometimes subtly and other times less so. At one point, Tanner has a confrontation with a Comanche man at a casino that seems to digress from the story a bit, but it serves the purpose of highlighting differences and animosity between people, and the pervasive "otherness" that causes so many rifts in our society.

That's where the timely factor comes in. It's not just about how these brothers represent the millions of Americans whose small town way of life is going extinct and creating such desperation, it's about how we go after what we want at the expense of other people, and treat others like the enemy. These fears, these attitudes and this desperation is cancerous and, sadly, cyclical.

That's more than you'd expect from a movie about bank robbers, to be sure.

~Steven C

Thanks for reading! Read more at Movie Muse Reviews

This is definitely the type of simple film that many might dismiss when first hearing about it or seeing the promotional footage of it. What's really surprising about it is the amount of emotional and dramatic weight that it carries. It's not primarily interested in gun fights or car chases. Instead, it's interested in exploring the dynamics of race and culture, and in depicting everyone as flawed individuals who you still feel empathy for. It gives you a portrayal of what poverty and the economy can do, even when never attempting to justify the horrible behavior on display or trying to make excuses for its characters. It's filled with wonderful, thoughtful dialogue while also playing out like a realistic morality tale. The three leads are also fantastic, especially Ben Foster, who deserves to get more roles as the talented character-actor he is. This is highly recommended.