Hell or High Water

A decent old school robbery crime drama that builds mainly on a desert atmosphere and a trio of great actors. Ben Foster is classically nutty, Chris Pine is excellent as usual, he's been picking decent films lately, and Jeff Bridges was perfect for the role of the Texas sheriff. I wasn't bored for a moment, it's just a pity that there is no gore at all, which would have been useful here, otherwise great. 80% (2016-11-22)

Texas has got something about it. The Southern atmosphere drips from each shot. McCarthy’s redneck poeticism engulfs you and Cave and Ellis have the lion´s share in this. A story about two brothers and their plan to overcome adversity embodied in bank clerks. Bridges’ lines are perfect, Foster is nicely crazy, Pine intentionally minimalistic. A modern western at its best. Sometimes even a blind pig can find its way to the trough. (2016-12-04)

As always, the fascinating setting of neo-western Texas is so bleak and grimy as to be immensely beautiful, and set within it is an admittedly unoriginal but utterly absorbing, rhythmic and logically unfolding plot about two bank robbers and a persistent sheriff. The performances are excellent throughout; directorially, the film it’s not dazzling, igniting tension with general communicativeness and intense escalation of the inevitable collision of the two sub-worlds, but within the established technical and narrative parameters, it’s a perfectly effective conversational detective drama that manages to create an excellent atmosphere only with engaging dialogues, diversified with an academically targeted racist theme. A great cool movie with the traditional Bridges and a great musical score by Nick Cave, a steal of the golden bald man might have been appropriate. (2016-12-29)

The beautiful, colorful Texas setting and the lead actors are great in Hell or High Water, but I'm not so sure about the rest. The film is definitely high quality, the acting is entertaining and so are the visuals, but for me personally it focuses too much on the characters of the two detectives in contrast to the two thieves and their personality shift over the course of almost two hours, and the story is not that well developed. The action is sparse and there is almost no suspense, but the film has its charms and by all accounts will find an audience; I guess I was expecting something a little different. (2022-11-09)

The pure essence of Cormack McCarthy, about which regular adaptations of his works can just dream about. Without exaggeration, the best film neo-western, watching which you will be astonished on how many levels it works, without any possible "but". It works smoothly as a genre movie, as a study of magnificently written (and without exception equally magnificently played) characters, as a hypnotic movie that raises emotions benefiting from Cave and endless Texas distances, as well as a camera that does them justice as a reflection of time and a social insight into the soul of the had-working Republican class, which has nothing, banks are bullying them and circumstances force them to take one credit after another and who get from one debt to another (no other film will show you in such an illustrative and nonviolent way why America chose Trump), as a textbook of minimalist dialogs "about something", even if seemingly "about nothing", like... Well, I could continue for hours and hours in the same way. For many years, I have not seen a movie that would so skillfully blur the line between pure genre pleasure and existential festival movie. For me, it's simply an instant classic, and not just within the "Peckinpah" genre. (2016-11-15)