Hell or High Water

Texas has got something about it. The Southern atmosphere drips from each shot. McCarthy’s redneck poeticism engulfs you and Cave and Ellis have the lion´s share in this. A story about two brothers and their plan to overcome adversity embodied in bank clerks. Bridges’ lines are perfect, Foster is nicely crazy, Pine intentionally minimalistic. A modern western at its best. Sometimes even a blind pig can find its way to the trough. (2016-12-04)

As always, the fascinating setting of neo-western Texas is so bleak and grimy as to be immensely beautiful, and set within it is an admittedly unoriginal but utterly absorbing, rhythmic and logically unfolding plot about two bank robbers and a persistent sheriff. The performances are excellent throughout; directorially, the film it’s not dazzling, igniting tension with general communicativeness and intense escalation of the inevitable collision of the two sub-worlds, but within the established technical and narrative parameters, it’s a perfectly effective conversational detective drama that manages to create an excellent atmosphere only with engaging dialogues, diversified with an academically targeted racist theme. A great cool movie with the traditional Bridges and a great musical score by Nick Cave, a steal of the golden bald man might have been appropriate. (2016-12-29)

A pure post-western that doesn't remember the old days fondly, but laments the misery of the present, which doesn't favor cowboys. It’s a wistful tale from the borderlands that reigns in its casting and pure direction. However, the theatrical standing on the porch with a beer in your hand and philosophy on your lips is perhaps too much at times. (2017-01-14)

And the Oscar for non-stop pure redneck neo-western goes to? David Mackenzie, who has handled an uninteresting material decently, creating a swaggering retro one-off with a boisterous Jeff Bridges the way we like him and a wacky Ben Foster the way we absolutely love him. Oddly enough, it also works quite well as an interesting probe amongst working-class Midwesterners. It doesn’t have any bigger ambitions, but it’s good for a Saturday siesta. (2016-11-19)

I found the term contemporary western a bit shocking at the start, but after all why not. The film takes place in Texas and apart from the kind-hearted sheriff, who is brilliantly portrayed by Jeff Bridges, there are also two guys who rob banks and I spent the entire movie trying to understand them, which, honestly, I couldn’t accomplish and the final punchline of the film doesn’t help it either. Nevertheless, thanks to the setting and the exemplary introduction to the Texan character, which takes shit from no one and nothing, this film is worth seeing. I also feel that this is the reason why this movie was actually made. It’s like a recruitment video: “Become a Texan… if you have the balls.” Addendum: And now we are going to play the movie Hell or High Water for you, which will present us in the rawest form and on top of that you will get to enjoy some beautiful scenery, which the director of photography used to emphasise the beauty of the scorched wasteland. (2017-01-30)