Hell or high water review
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Hell or high water
Lionsgate
R. 102 min
There are a few things that have intrigued me about this film not the least of which is the appearance of Jeff Bridges who I enjoy in everything he does. Second of all I've liked Chris Pine in the STAR TREK reboot and was interested to see him in a new and different role.
Number three would be that bleakWest Texas look and feel as the film is centered on a series of bank robberies in that forbidding part of the state. This is one of those nouveaux westerns with no real good guys and no real bad guys, just guys who are wound up in the minor tragedies of life. Sometimes those minor tragedies get out of here
It's also something of a buddy picture times too.
Marcus Hamilton Bridges) and Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham)aging Texas Rangers the first of which just days from retirement and the other his longtime friend and partner.
The other two the antagonists, are Pine and Ben Foster as Toby and Tyler Howard. Toby is a divorcee who wants to make life better for his estranged sons and brother Tyler a loose cannon looking for trouble. Unscrupulous bank skullduggery has cheated the boys out of their inheritance with almost no way to pay off the looming mortgage and leave the oil-rich land to their heirs. The boys have a plan to rob the branches of the bank in question, launder the money and pay off the debt. This seemingly small potatoes case lands in the laps of Hamilton and Parker, Hamilton looking at the case as a little bit of excitement before he's put out to pasture. It's not a horrendous crime and you're not really rooting for the robbers to be apprehended until things go amiss, as they always do, and innocent people end up dead.
You may guess, since that is one of the modern-day is anti-hero westerns there will be no joyful triumph nor European style tragedy.
I'm not sure why I enjoy this type of movie but I do and I did like this one. Frankly I might have liked it a little bit more since it seems to be a tweener in this particular style. It's not as wild and crazy as the Coen brothers NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and it's not anywhere near as Bleak as the novel that was adapted from by by Cormac McCarthy. Still it's along those lines, well acted all the way around and should please anyone who likes that style.
B+
WSS
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