Hell or High Water

Director: David Mackenzie
Year Released: 2016
Rating: 2.0

Brothers Tanner (Ben Foster) and Toby (Chris Pine) go on a bank-robbing spree in Texas in order to pay off a mortgage, with Texas Rangers Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and Parker (Gil Birmingham) in (slow) pursuit. In essence, it's a dumbed-down Cormac McCarthy story and surprisingly light on depth (aside from a tense concluding conversation between Pine and Bridges), with a few racist comments made by the characters (primarily Hamilton) against Native Americans in some barely-there 'analysis' of relations between that ethnic group and white Americans ("Cowboys versus Indians"). It's also a little too routine for my taste (the robberies become redundant, the shootout between Tanner and the Law is cliché) and I'm certain Tanner and Toby could have come up with another way of raising capital: they seem adept at snagging cars, why not resell those instead?