Hell or High Water Review

Sheridan's script is the draw, and it does two jobs at once. Two brothers rob the branches of the bank foreclosing on their mother's ranch, and every stretch of West Texas they drive through is papered with signs advertising debt relief. Mackenzie directs slow and dry, letting Giles Nuttgens hold wide on flat land and dead towns so the robberies play like errands. Chris Pine underplays the planner and Ben Foster plays the brother who enjoys the work, and the imbalance is the point.

Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham get the better half of the movie, two Rangers needling each other about Comanche ancestry across a hundred miles of nothing, and the diner waitress who refuses to surrender her tip steals a whole scene without raising her voice. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis score it with guitars that sound sun bleached. We stop short of an A because Bridges leans on mumbled shtick a beat too often and the politics get stated rather than dramatized once the chase closes. The last porch conversation is still perfect.