Remember the tired, quietly marginalized South of True Detective? (I’m talking Big Hug Mug, natch, not Vince Vaughn.)
Well, it’s back, it’s Texas, and it’s the backdrop for Hell or High Water–a smart, beautifully acted and well-paced movie that on paper seems like a ho-hum bank-heist potboiler, but in the execution is as close to a masterpiece as this genre gets and as downright great as this sentence is long. (So there.)
Chris Pine and Ben Foster play brothers 
Toby and Tanner Howard, a couple of poor Texas boys reunited after Tanner’s stint in prison. They trudge through this dustbowl tableau of rusty small towns and debt relief signs, piloting a series of equally dusty eighties american clunkers. They undertake to rob some banks for a decidedly zeitgeisty reason, one involving loans and foreclosures and giving kids a better life and so on–and they’re fairly cunning about it, planning things and hitting small branches and taking small hauls of untraceable bills. They’re pursued in this endeavor by two laid back, steady-as-she-goes drawlin’ Texas Rangers: a fantastic and gruff Jeff Bridges and his Mexican/Indian partner, played by Gil Birmingham.
The plot sounds formulaic, and it is. But these are actors at the top of their game: wry, thoughtful, measured. This film is a slow burn, and a very, very good one.
This is a world that feels real, true, authentic. It’s Unforgiven for a stoic, quietly enduring post-bailout America. Thematically it pulls no punches at The Man, but it doesn’t condescend or beat us over the head either. Little quips–often from bit players–set the tone, a mix of Don’t Tread on Me, rust-belt grit, and open carry machismo. Like True Detective, there’s an honesty here. Hell or High Water is smart, funny, tense, moving, and altogether enjoyable. You’ll sympathize with the outlaw protagonists, the Rangers, even the waitstaff. Pretty much everyone but the bankers.
There are films to skip this summer, films to wait to watch on Netflix with your fiance and your Orville Redenbacher’s lowfat and your iOS. This is not that. See this as it was intended, in the honest to goodness picture house, and savor the most immersive experience of all-American filmmaking ever directed by a Scotsman. (Yep.)
Haus Verdict: An otherwise workaday heist story done incredibly well. Tough, genuine, real, measured. Sublime. See this.
Hell or High Water opened August 12.
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