COLLECTION CHRISTOPHEL, REX FEATURES
4 KEEPING IT REAL
Despite rifing on Western traditions of bank
robbers and lawmen, the story is anchored in
relatable, contemporary concerns. Poverty and
struggle are ubiquitous. “A ilm has to be about
something that matters to me,” stresses Sheridan.
“This is not a stylised version of rural America;
the exodus [of people] is a constant wherever you
go.” Sheridan’s own Texan upbringing added
authenticity. “I know these towns so well you
could draw a road map from the script.” He lent
his local knowledge to a cameo as a cowboy, too.
“I think that clinched the deal,” he laughs.5 FINDING THE FUNNY
Much faster to shoot the shit than their side
arms, both robbers and cops have a lovely line in
playful (and occasionally not-so-playful) banter.It provides a handy tension-breaker, even in
Bridges’ racist slurs against his Mexican partner.
“It’s an interesting game, that,” admits
Mackenzie. “We were sensitive and awkward
about it when we were doing it, but we all agreed
we should just confront it. It felt like it’s part of
the world. There’s a lot of humour between Ben
and Chris, too.”6 MAKING IT COOK
Mackenzie reunited with his long-standing
cinematographer Giles Nuttgens to capture the
full heat haze of America’s Southwest. “Most
[DPs] like to shoot in magic hour when the light
is going down,” says Mackenzie, “but I wanted to
go for that extreme contrast, midday-sun kind of
feeling. It seemed like such an important part of
what this world is.”HELL OR HIGH WATER
★★★★★
FROM NOW / RATED MA15+THIS LEAN, COMPLEX neo Western, written by
Sicario scribe Taylor Sheridan, throws us
straight into a West Texan bank robbery. We
soon meet the two brothers behind the heist
— Toby (Pine), a former gas company worker
and divorced father of two, and Tanner (Foster),
an unpredictable career criminal — and discover
they’re on a meticulously planned mission to
gather enough unmarked bills to prevent the
foreclosure of their late mother’s farmland.
Enter Marcus (Jeff Bridges reviving his
marble-gargling Rooster Cogburn drawl from
the Coen brothers’ True Grit remake), an
uncompromising, zinger-ready Texas Ranger
who, alongside his part-Comanche partner
Alberto (Twilight’s Birmingham), saddles up to
track down the brothers before their next big
score. Taut, tense and with Jeff Bridges at his
best, this is a deceptively simple tale of Texan
cops and robbers that drags the Old West into
the modern age.
EXTRAS Featurettes, Q&A, trailer. JIMI FAMUREWA7 NAILING THE SCORE
Unknown to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
— bandmates in the Bad Seeds and
Grinderman, and frequent ilm composers —
their scores for Westerns like The Proposition
and Lawless were Mackenzie’s choice of temp
music. After he’d toyed with using female
country vocals or no score at all, the solution
became obvious. “We thought, ‘Why don’t we
ask them?’, recalls the director. “We sent them
a copy, apologising for having appropriated
their music already.” By turns mournful and
epic, Cave and Ellis’ “atmospheric without
being twee” cues offer an elegy to an Old West
beset by modern woes.HELL OR HIGH WATER IS OUT NOW ON DVD,
BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD.