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Hell or High Water (2016)

6/7/2020

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Picture
Two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) rob banks to save the family farm.
Picture
Two Texas rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) track down the bank robbers.

While the plot stays focused on catching the bad guys, the movie develops a larger theme with simple lines of dialogue. When the ranger (Bridges) asks the local cowboys hanging out at a diner whether they saw who robbed the bank, one of them says, "That bank's been robbing me for years." 

Every scene has a momentary reference to the world within which the cops and robbers operate. The injustice of that world mocks the simplistic morality of good-guys and bad-guys. 

There's only one speech about the world they live in. The other ranger (Birmingham), who is part-Comanche, describes how his ancestors lost the land to white men and now the white men have lost the land to "them" (he points to the bank). Simple. Eloquent.

We learn how the "good" brother (Pine) ruined his marriage when he tells his teen-age son not to make the same mistakes he made. The son says, "You hand me a beer and then tell me not to be like you. Which is it?" There's the whole story in one line.

The "bad" brother (Foster) mostly rides the adrenaline rush of the robberies, but, in the end, without saying anything, he redeems himself with one snap decision. No words needed.

I don't usually go for stories about cops-and-robbers. This movie is an exception because it is so nearly perfect and because in the end you can hardly tell the cop and the robber apart. I mean that literally. Watch for the way Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges are costumed in the last scene.
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