Article archive / September 1, 2016
Originally published: . Volume 7, No. 9. Source pages: 10.
This is an extraordinarily complex film. It turns the western genre inside out and raises profound questions. Westerns usually celebrate conventional morality and the West as frontier, a promise of newness and growth. This movie begins by taking us to a West in decay, dusty roads decorated by signs offering payday loans, debt relief that the audience knows are spurious.
In this setting, two brothers, their family ranch on the brink of being seized for defaulting on usurious loans and an exploitative reverse mortgage, plan a series of robberies of the predatory bank involved.
Their desperate attempt, madcap in its origins, turns bloody, bringing a pair of Texas Rangers on their trail. The two brothers, as different as Abel and Cain, are bonded by their love for each other as well as their outrage at the prospect of losing the family ranch to the ravages of money grubbing.
The pursuing Rangers, too, are an unlikely pair, a seasoned old pro who constantly chivvies his Indian junior with racial slurs, and his stoic victim who is acutely aware of but largely silent about the injustice of his ancestors’ having been dispossessed by the white man. Despite their differences, the Rangers, too, are closely bonded, not just by their shared profession, but by a genuine love.
One of the strengths of the movie is letting us see these four interact with each other and with other minor but striking characters caught in the grip of the hell and high water of a fading way of life. These include a termagant old waitress who rides stern herd on her Ranger guests; another waitress, who, touched by the good looks and generous tip from Toby, the younger brother, refuses to betray him to the police; a smarmy bank executive who tries to undermine the efforts to forestall the foreclosure; a couple of wilding teenagers; and a dark and frightening Comanche gambler who confronts Tanner, the older brother.
Perhaps the darkest, most interesting, though not the most engaging character in this story, is the older brother. Tanner is a career criminal, having served time for bank robberies in the past, and, in a fit of rage, having killed his father. The episode when Tanner is confronted by the Comanche in the casino is revealing. He asks the Indian if he is a Comanche and if that means Lord of the Plains. The Indian replies that Comanche means the enemy of all, then, staring steel-eyed at Tanner, asks, “What does that make you?” Tanner’s response: “Comanche.”
Given his history, the violence and lust for excitement shown in the story, one might see Tanner as a psychopath. On the other hand, Tanner is deeply attached to his brother, despite his doubts, agrees to the robbery plan because his brother asks it of him, and, in the finale, puts himself at risk to help his brother escape.
Loving another would foreclose conventional psychopathy. His slaying of his father can be seen as a metaphor for, as well as an expression of, the rejection of conventional morality, but Tanner does seem to have a commitment to a deviant ethic, a form of sociopathy.
The film ends with a meeting of the now retired old Ranger and the younger brother. It ends with their mutual acknowledgement that both are haunted by what they have experienced.
Hell Or High Water is a tour de force. It gives us a new Western, one that is a celebration of irretrievable loss. The loss of the West as mythic place, a world of clear right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, of promising new beginnings.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.