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View Full Version : Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie)



Peng
08-21-2016, 03:09 AM
http://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Hell-or-High-Water-poster-1.jpg

Peng
08-21-2016, 03:14 AM
Pretty remarkable how, despite the different directors, Sicario and Hell and High Water really feel apiece of each other -- this seems to be the case where the writer is the prevalent voice. Both of Taylor Sheridan's scripts exhibit a keen sense in exploring a place and its people, stinging dialogue (although this one is more florid), and a patient, world-building, character-establishing stillness. The difference is, that stillness is used to menacing and nicely suffocating effect in Sicario, while Hell and High Water infuses it with playfulness and melancholy (but not also without its few tense, nail-biting set-pieces). Actors develop rapports and rattle off Sheridan's dialogue most capably, though for me few cinematic joys this year rival that of hearing Jeff Bridges grizzles the hell out of his lines.

Peng
08-21-2016, 03:18 AM
Also really like this Mondo poster:

http://i1.wp.com/bitcast-a-sm.bitgravity.com/slashfilm/wp/wp-content/images/hell-or-high-water-mondo-poster-700x1050.jpg?resize=700%2C1050

DavidSeven
08-22-2016, 06:20 AM
Well-paced, straight-forward, and competent. It's a little flat cinematically, but the score, soundtrack and locale work elevate it just enough to be above pedestrian. Cut from the same cloth as Sicario, but I don't think Mackenzie has Villeneuve's awareness of tone or his skill with a setpiece. There's no Deakins either, which is unfortunate because Sheridan's Texas stories seem particularly suited to Deakins's lens.

I think the film's key components, script included, are done just well enough to be "good." I wouldn't say the film has any glaring flaws or weaknesses. At the same time, the film doesn't quite etch itself into your mind; it doesn't quite leave anything lasting. It is what it is -- a solid piece of sub-Texas genre work--but not too much more. Solid performances all around, though nothing that quite transcends the serviceable filmmaking.

Ezee E
09-17-2016, 11:04 PM
https://cdn.evbuc.com/eventlogos/2875019/hellorhighwater.jpg

IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2582782/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

Ezee E
09-17-2016, 11:07 PM
This is very much a Match Cut movie. This is very much a Scar movie. You guys need to see this. They nail the Texas sensibilities, the modern day Western, and Bridge/Pine/Foster are all in top form here.

The bank robberies are pretty Manr-Esque even.

TGM
09-17-2016, 11:18 PM
Bump.

TGM
09-17-2016, 11:18 PM
Already a thread. ;)

matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?6461-Hell-or-High-Water-(David-Mackenzie)

Ezee E
09-17-2016, 11:22 PM
Nick Cave score by the way.

Mysterious Dude
09-22-2016, 10:22 PM
I wouldn't call it bad, but it's really average. The screenplay is bad. Jeff Bridges' partner even talks about what he's going to do when he retires. Gee, I wonder what's gonna happen to him! I don't know Taylor Sheridan's background, but this movie felt like it was written by a tourist to me. "Oh, did I forget to mention we're in TEXAS?!"

Henry Gale
09-30-2016, 01:03 AM
Liked this very much. Peng and DS summed up things pretty nicely, but even when agreeing with some of the thinner elements I still thought the rest of it was hefty enough to make up for things like its slightly underwhelming visual look and more predictably elements towards the end, But again, those things only stand out because of just how engaging the performances, slowly revealed premise and geographical storytelling are to the nicely varying emotional experience.

Foster, Bridges, Pine and Birmingham are all so magnetic, most of their scenes are just them sitting on porches or driving together, and you feel like you could watch it for hours.

Extremely solid stuff.

number8
10-05-2016, 05:11 PM
Not as good as Starred Up, but I like how low-key and purposefully low stakes it is. Halfway through the movie, I was worried that it's going to ruin that vibe with a ramped-up climax (especially given the mallet of a foreshadowing of a "blaze of glory"), and it did a little bit, but I'm glad it moves past that to get to that final scene on the porch. That's the right send-off to this story.

Morris Schæffer
10-05-2016, 05:35 PM
I really love this. Not sure where to criticize. I was unprepared for the blaze of glory finale it ended with, thinking it wasn't right for the character although the Foster character did let shine through he wished better things for his brother and his son so I guess this was his way of making that happen. That said, I'm still not sure how the Pine character got completely away with it. Temporarily, sure, but all the way? That's kinda far-fetched in this day and age, especially because the Bridges character was on to him in the end. He was retired, sure, but it seems hard to believe no one else would have been able to at least make an effort to dig deeper and connect the dots.

By the way, when the Indian partner died, Bridges' howl was sheer agony. I shuddered for a second.

number8
10-05-2016, 07:27 PM
Yeah, the scheme of getting the same bank to manage the trust is hilarious and brilliant, and I would buy him getting away completely with that if it's only about a robbery. It's much harder to buy the Rangers giving up so quickly when they've murdered a bunch of people, including one of their own.

Winston*
10-21-2016, 07:49 PM
Pine getting away with it was pretty absurd. There were dozens of people that could have tied him to his brother outside of that one waitress: the people in the casinos, the death metal guy he beats the shit out of, the three old men in the diner who said "they look like brothers" etc.

I don't really have a problem with it though, because it worked for the movie. If he gets caught and loses the land he's been trying to get for his children, the whole thing just becomes pointless nihilism.


Pretty good movie. I have a soft spot for films about brothers.

Spinal
11-07-2016, 05:08 PM
I think Toby eluding the law is not just an arbitrary aspect of the story that could have gone one way or another. I think, in some respects, it's the whole point of the movie. What the film says to me, through the numerous roadside signs showing offers for debt relief, etc., through numerous exchanges with supporting characters, is that Toby and Tanner's actions are being put in the context of the larger crimes being perpetrated by the banks themselves. When small thieves steal from master thieves, how much passion can someone like Marcus muster in bringing them to justice? Toby ends up where he ends up, in my mind, largely because the culture in which he lives empathizes with his situation. Police officers will still do their jobs. But Marcus seems to enjoy the pursuit in the same way that he would enjoy a crossword puzzle sitting on his front porch. When he walks away from the final conversation, do we really feel that there is justice that needs to be set right? That's the movie's big question, to my mind.

I thought this was timely and thoroughly engaging. One of the year's best.

transmogrifier
11-09-2016, 11:38 PM
Went to watch this while the American presidential election results coming in, and I don't know, it seems like was an apt choice. It has a keen sense of time and place, the discontent, the decay, the bitterness of an unfair system (real or imagined)... The dialogue is pleasingly tangential to the action a lot of the time, with laconic barbs traded between friends, family, and strangers. Doesn't ever deepen into anything truly affecting because the characters always seem trapped by the dedication to capturing a mood, and thus they never really seem to exist as independent entities. Still, enjoyable and immersive.

dreamdead
03-10-2017, 11:32 AM
This... was decidedly serviceable. The Bridges character is written oddly, so that the jokering about race becomes a loveable characteristic, rather than something that would be reported to higher-ups immediately. And while that mentality "reveals" the old-school approach that he takes, it seems like such a backwards approach to a film that otherwise tries to be empathetic towards a large region of lower-class individuals. It's one of those "smart" screenwriting tricks that exists as just that, a trick, and undercuts the tone that the film elsewhere aspires toward.

The focus on masculinity could be either studied or mocked for how it tries to recover itself in a world where there are no women who matter (the ex-wife is a cliche, though at least she doesn't have a heart of gold, I guess)--it's the sort of disinterested gaze on women that can circumvent criticism by making the waitress so caught up in Pine's humanity.

The Ben Foster character is a type that's been done before, and the lack of psychologizing him is where the film errors; he's the interesting character, but he's stuck going commando where a smarter film would sketch out something stronger to be done.

All told, it's a decent film, and I like the coda, but it feels less refined--a weaker version of Sicario, which feels smarter and more nuanced in both gender and regionalism.

Skitch
03-10-2017, 12:06 PM
Well made, but entertainment is low. That is, I doubt I'll revisit it anytime soon, if ever.

Philip J. Fry
05-06-2017, 07:38 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwDKeme_im0