Hell or High Water (2016)

Some films announce themselves loudly, desperate for your attention from the first frame. Hell or High Water does the opposite. It just sits down beside you, orders a beer, and quietly gets on with being one of the best crime dramas made in the last decade. No flash, no fuss. Just a damn good film.

What strikes you first is how rooted in reality the whole thing feels. This isn't a story that's interested in glamorising crime or turning desperation into spectacle. Two brothers are robbing banks across West Texas, and the film is utterly honest about why. Poverty. Debt. A system that has chewed up ordinary people and spat them out. The banks have taken everything from this family for generations, and now the brothers are simply taking some of it back. There's a moral grey area running right through the heart of the story, and the film is confident enough to let you sit in it without spelling out where you should land.

Chris Pine is genuinely impressive here, playing against the kind of easy charm he's known for. There's a weariness to him, a quiet love for his brother and his boys that drives every decision he makes. Ben Foster, though, is something else entirely. He brings this crackling, unpredictable energy that keeps you slightly on edge whenever he's on screen. Together they make a pairing that feels completely believable, two blokes who've lived hard lives and know it.

And then there's Jeff Bridges. I'm not sure "effortlessly brilliant" even does it justice. He plays the Texas Ranger on their trail with this laconic, unhurried confidence, throwing out dry one-liners and reading the situation better than anyone around him. It's the kind of performance where you're never catching him acting. He's just there, fully formed, completely real. His relationship with his partner gives the film some of its warmest and funniest moments, which is a clever bit of tonal balance in something that could otherwise feel relentlessly bleak.

The landscape is practically a character in itself. That dusty, sun-scorched Texas terrain feels exhausted and forgotten, full of shuttered businesses and billboards advertising debt relief. The cinematography captures a part of America that mainstream Hollywood rarely bothers with, and it does so without condescension or poverty tourism. It's just honest. The soundtrack, too, earns its place without ever showing off, sitting underneath the scenes rather than telling you how to feel about them.

The pacing is deliberate, and I mean that as a compliment. This is a slow-burn film, and it trusts its audience to stay with it. Nothing is over-explained. The tension builds gradually, fed by small moments and loaded conversations rather than action set-pieces, though when things do kick off, the film handles it with real weight. There are consequences here that actually land.

If you're a fan of the modern Western tradition, Hell or High Water fits comfortably alongside the best of them. I loved the Coen Brothers' True Grit for similar reasons, that sense that the genre can carry genuine moral and human weight without becoming self-important. Hell or High Water has that same quality. It's about poverty, banks, justice, and family, and it handles all four with a kind of controlled, understated power that most films can only dream of.

Four stars. Go and watch it.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 2016  | Watched: 2025-04-15

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Where to watch

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Related on Movies With Macca

More with Jeff Bridges: The Last Picture Show (1971) · Surf's Up (2007) · True Grit (2010) · Crazy Heart (2009)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More western: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) · Rio Bravo (1959) · Ride Lonesome (1959) · The Great Train Robbery (1903)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)