There are films that exist solely for the purpose of being made for the times we live in. Spike Lee’s 25th Hour is one of those, set against the backdrop of a post-9/11 New York. The film is never about 9/11, but the tragedy is omnipresent in the story. The opening credits showcase the tributes at Ground Zero, and conversations take place as bulldozers clear rubble in the background.
Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly is another example. In it, pompadoured hitman Brad Pitt moves through a post-Katrina New Orleans, carrying out his business as the financial system collapses around him and scoffing as a new President Barack Obama preaches about “one country and one people.” The ending monologue is one of the best in recent history.
Now we have Hell or High Water, a film set against the backdrop of a failed “Hope and Change” America, where everyday working people are still waiting for their bailout and the villains aren’t people robbing banks, it’s the banks robbing the people.
Hell or High Water is the America Donald Trump speaks about at his rallies when he’s firing up the forgotten working and non-working classes with talk of a “rigged system” and a failed economic recovery. It also happens to be the best film of the year so far, written (Sicario’s Taylor Sheridan) and acted with such deftness that you have to pinch yourself to be reminded that it’s not a Coen Brothers movie.
Chris Pine and Ben Foster play out-of-luck brothers and bank robbers in Midland, Texas, and Jeff Bridges is a retiring old law dog on their trail accompanied by a half-Native American, half-Mexican partner. The hows of the plot are not nearly as interesting as the whys. The big banks sucked the brothers’ land out from under their deceased mother and this is their only chance to save it. Pine’s Toby has the plan and Foster’s Tanner enjoys the thrills. The camaraderie and banter between the four main characters are what gives the film its charge. Both brothers are given opportunities to turn the other away from seductive temptation — one with violence, the other with lust. It’s these moments of rare complexity that breathe life into the down time between hold ups.
Accompanying them on their rides to and from towns across Texas is a haunting and grinding score by Nick Cave that lets you know with a subtle pounding that things will not always go according to plan.
But the film’s strength isn’t necessarily in the story. We’ve seen this before in some form or another. It’s the details of the setting. At a brief stop at Tanner’s trailer we see a Gadsden flag (“Don’t Tread on Me”) hanging on the wall — not, say, a Confederate flag, which would have been the obvious and all-too-easy symbolic commentary for a Hollywood film to make. At these small, rundown town cafes, everyone is hurting and everyone feels forgotten, and the gun-waving antics of a couple of good ol’ boys taking from the bank what was taken from them suits most of them just fine.
Everyone has lost something, not just the brothers. These same themes have been prevalent on the 2016 campaign trail since last year, which is why the film resonates the way it does, and why someone like Trump — improbable as his candidacy may be — has been able to rise and become the GOP nominee. Hell or High Water is the most political film of the year, but not because it clubs you over the head with its agenda like, say, Ghostbusters or Money Monster. It’s more subtle than that.
The film’s original title was Comancheria, a reference to the rise and fall of the Comanche tribe of New Mexico and Texas. While at a poker table, Tanner confronts one such Comanche about his heritage, describing him as a lord of nothing and an enemy to everyone. Tanner is forcefully reminded that the takers eventually become the ones who are taken. Just as white settlers robbed the Comanche of their lands, the banks later robbed the white settlers.
In modern America, we have all been taken from — white, black, Comanche, Mexican, male and female. It’s now just a question of how to get it back. Just as Killing Them Softly declares “America is a Business.”, Hell or High Water declares America is a bank, and right now in these times, everyone is a Comanche.
Stephen Miller is a digital media designer and contributor. He also publishes and produces The Wilderness, which focuses on viral politics and culture media.
