Hell or High Water (2016)

………………………………………………………………….

Hell or High Water Movie Review

Hell or High Water is a 2016 western crime film directed by David Mackenzie and starring Ben Foster, Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges. It is an okay movie, nothing more than that.

………………………………………………………………….

“You fellas robbin’ the bank? What’s it look like, old man? But you ain’t Mexicans“

………………………………………………………………….

The film follows two brothers who carry out a series of bank robberies to save their family farm. Needless to say, this movie is incredibly derivative. It is basically a rip-off of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, very unoriginal and immensely uninspired. This plot works and it always will, but it is still nothing new and that needs to be taken into account when reviewing this movie, something most reviewers unfortunately did not do.

Hell or High Water is really well directed and of course well acted by its talented cast with all three of these actors doing a very good job. It is also solidly edited and sometimes even pleasantly emotional. But it hit all the obvious and expected plot points for me to enjoy it more. The family drama is fine, but nothing exceptionally remarkable and that is this movie in a nutshell – okay, but never more than that.

………………………………………………………………….

What Hell or High Water excels at is its humor which is surprisingly even present and so well done with a couple of really funny moments. It is traditional in the best way possible and it helped this movie a lot and made it much more entertaining than it would have been without it. What I also admired about it is that it stayed away from violence and it gave us more of a crime drama than a crime thriller which is great. But what is not great is that during those crime/action sequences the tone was comedic and lightweight and that was just tonally odd and not fitting in with the plot and totally unrealistic. It is fun, but that is not how these robberies play out in real life at all.

Hell or High Water is definitely an okay movie with its fine moments, good performances, a great approach with less violence and more drama and a surprisingly solid humor, but the overall story is so uninspired and unoriginal as we’ve seen movies like this countless times before and that is why it never reached greatness despite its many positive aspects.