CAPSULE: Hell or High Water (2016, Dir. David Mackenzie)

Living next to a professor of politics means I am constantly reminded that the populist right-wing mindset in the U.S. is unfathomable to someone like me. My ranting about Donald Trump's inadequacy as a leader/human being is invariably met with the assertion that neither logic nor common sense can enter into my assessments if the red states are involved; it's all about emotion and circumstance in the "wild west".

David Mackenzie's timely overlay of this contemporary political rubric on the traditional western goes some way towards making the modern political landscape comprehensible. Hell or High Water, with its anti-heroes fighting for financial security against the banks who threaten their family's inheritance presents an absorbing, if romanticised, portrait of Southerners and their defiance of all things that threaten their precious self-determination. I can see this crew voting for Trump and believing they're in the right.

And I couldn't hate them for it. Ben Forster and Chris Pine's bank robber brothers, Tanner and Toby Howard, are that likable. They're rough around the edges and not the most eloquent when it comes to their establishment-trumping master plan, but their moral code is unambiguously laid out and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their own is eagerly lionised. Their lovable rogue status is established early in the piece and carried through with bad boy charm.

That brings with it the usual law-abiding counterpoint and Jeff Bridges' verge-of-retirement sheriff, Marcus Hamilton, delivers with caustic charisma. He's a doggedly matter of fact type, sidekicked by his Native American partner, Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). The two share a lackadaisical approach to law enforcement and race relations. The latter borders on offensive but for the fact that Mackenzie doles out suitable shade from those that surround Hamilton and that his relationship with Parker is clearly co-dependent.

Mackenzie's screenwriter, Taylor Sheridan (who previously ponied up with the script for Sicario), doesn't so much succeed in getting inside the Southern mindset, as celebrate its dogged irascibility, but the end result is evocative nonetheless. He still has an issue with women (Dale Dickey is excellent as Toby's ex-wife but the role is minimal), though the film's focus is probably not going to see that called out at any length. This is a man-provider deal and its sympathies are allocated accordingly.

The man-do-good, man-do-bad divide is well hooked, though, and Mackenzie and Sheridan give generous space to both vantage points. They barely giving either pair a line of sight on the other, something that favourably recalls the Coen's No Country for Old Men, and both pairs' internal dramas are rich with ambiguity. This leaves Hell or High Water compelling on a character level and involving in its action - something that has been in short supply of late.

★★★★

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