2 Texas brothers rob branches of the bank that is about to foreclose on their family's ranch. A pair of Texas Rangers race to catch them before they can finish enough robberies to save the land. David Mackenzie's film is a modern Western about who the real thieves are.
Hell or High Water is a 2016 crime, drama and western film directed by David Mackenzie. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (1 cinematography and 3 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Unforgiven uses several of the same techniques.
Treating a small town as more than a setting. Its buildings, lighting and relationships show the community's values and limits, which shape what the characters can do and what gets destroyed.
How this film uses it
Giles Nuttgens shoots the abandoned storefronts, payday loan signs and foreclosure notices of West Texas as the film's moral landscape. In every town the brothers pass through, you can see the economic devastation that led to their crime. The setting makes the film's political point for it.
Where to see it
The drive through a string of dying Texas towns. The camera records the strip malls, the abandoned businesses and the signs for debt consolidation services. This is what the financial crisis the film is about looks like on the ground.
Using a genre's familiar rules, like its heroes and its violence, to take those rules apart. The film turns your expectations into a political point the genre usually avoids.
How this film uses it
Taylor Sheridan sets the bank robbery inside the moral world of the Western and then flips it. The banks are the outlaws and the brothers are the farmers who lost their land. The Ranger is the lawman enforcing a system the film exposes as corrupt. Once again, the genre gets rearranged to point at the actual theft.
Where to see it
The diner waitress refusing to let the Rangers take the tip the brothers left her. The community instinctively sides with the outlaws over the law. With that one gesture, the flipped Western is complete.
Spreading good and bad qualities across 3 or more characters, where most stories use 2 sides. Nobody is purely the hero or the villain, so you can't easily pick who to root for.
How this film uses it
Toby stands for moral necessity, Tanner for recklessness and Marcus for institutional authority. Mackenzie refuses to make any of the 3 the hero. The film's morals play out as a conversation between their positions, and it never arrives at a verdict.
Where to see it
The final confrontation between Marcus and Toby. The Ranger knows what he knows and so does the outlaw. Neither man can arrest or accuse the other without implicating the system that produced both of them.
Watching events from a measured distance with no swelling music, tear-jerking close-ups or showy camera moves. The film trusts what happens to carry the weight on its own.
How this film uses it
Mackenzie films the brothers' relationship with no backstory. You see how they are with each other in how they argue, how they protect each other and how they share silence. Their love comes through in behavior, and no scene of open emotion ever spells it out.
Where to see it
Toby and Tanner at the campfire between robberies. The film watches them share the same space and doesn't make them explain their situation or their feelings. That restraint makes the bond easier to read.
Questions
Hell or High Water: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does Hell or High Water use?
CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in Hell or High Water (2016): Small Town as Moral Geography, Revisionist Genre Argument, Triangulated Moral Ambiguity and Observational Restraint.
Who directed Hell or High Water?
David Mackenzie directed Hell or High Water, released in 2016. CineCode also covers Outlaw King (2018).
What films are similar to Hell or High Water?
Films that share techniques with Hell or High Water include Unforgiven (1992), Fargo (1996), Memories of Murder (2003), Lady Bird (2017).
