Sure Rob Banks-As Willie Sutton Said-“That Is Where The Money Is” Chris Pine And Jeff Bridges “Hell Or High Water” (2016)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Hell and High Water, starring Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster, 2016

I was more than happy to take this assignment from Greg Green our site manager and a guy who has proven to be a great editor over time. I am happy because I always am ready, willing and able to review a Jeff Bridge’s film ever since I first saw him way back when in The Last Picture Show and have wondered ever since why, until Crazy Hearts several years ago, he had not won an Oscar for his many great performances. I am happy also because any film that starts with a Townes Van Zandt song (Dollar Bill Blues) and a slew of other cowboy-etched efforts will immediately draw my attention. To add another point I am always happy to review a modern cowboy film where the actors, or one actor Chris Pine, who plays somber brother Toby to Ben Foster’s wild boy Tanner, remind me of the late Sam Shepard and his stoic routines playing a man of the West.

But most importantly for this film Hell and High Water I have been given an opportunity to answer back to young and up and coming film reviewer Sarah LeMoyne about something she wrote about my attitude toward snitches in her review of 1988’s Married To The Mob. There Sarah castigated me, and by implication half the older male writers at this publication because, come hell or high water, we are since corner boy days very, very squeamish about finks, you know snitches in that case by that role of one ex-wife of a mob hit man to the FBI. As Sarah said in the interest of love that woman had every right to snitch. I went crazy when she mentioned to her take when she asked my opinion. Now I get a real rebuttal since I am sure that she would not want anybody to snitch to the Texas Rangers on sexy and cowboy handsome Toby who after all was not doing it for the mob, just a job, but for his sons. Sarah can stew in her juices on that one until she replies in some future review she writes-if she gets one.                 

  

But on to the real deal, on to the “skinny” as Sam Lowell who backs me up 100% on this snitch business. Toby and Tanner, one thoughtful the other a wild boy, brothers are robbing banks to right some wrongs to their family but also as just mentioned to ensure that Toby’s sons don’t have to grow up and be dirt poor like he had grown up in rural Texas. Why banks. Well as the title to this review points out in regard to a classic statement on the matter by the famous, or infamous, bank robber when asked- “that is where the money is.” That was Toby’s plan in any case. You might ask why banks in this day in age but it seems down in prairie Texas and maybe plenty of other places as well the branches of major banks are not up to snuff necessarily on the latest security technology. So the boys play out the old Wild West banking robberies scenario to further Toby’s plan for his sons. Tanner, a jailbird is just along for the adventure, for the blood sport, for kicks and because Toby is his brother.

Come hell or high water though, using that phrase again in a different context, the law, here the well-known Texas Rangers, headed by a pair of agents, one the almost retiree Marcus Hamilton, played by versatile Jeff Bridges, are on the case. The wily old Marcus has the case half figured out before noon that these robberies were planned and were aimed at a particular banking system. All they had to do was wait it on at one of the branches and the game would be over. Old Marcus proved to be right except before the end his partner was killed by the warrior king Tanner in a shoot-out scene very reminiscent of the final showdown between the character played by Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra and the coppers also after a failed robbery with deaths involved. Well Tanner was doomed anyway. Toby is another story since he actually was able to succeed in his plan-in the short run. See Marcus figured him in on the caper as well but couldn’t quite get anybody else to connect the dots. He and Toby have a final verbal confrontation before the curtain closes leaving everybody to wonder what will happen next. Making me try to get Sarah LeMoyne to squirm a little over whether she would turn Toby in, snitch on the guy. For now that’s it.