60 LISTENER NOVEMBER 5 2016
BOOKS&CULTURE
HELL OR HIGH WATER
directed by David Mackenzie
‘F
ast cash when you need it,”
reads the billboard taunting
an empty West Texas highway.
Two brothers, quiet divorcee
Toby (Chris Pine) and sea-
soned con Tanner (Ben Foster), roll past
it in a behemoth pickup. They’ve just
got their “fast cash” by robbing a bank,
which is certainly one way of doing
it. Tanner howls gleefully, the thrill
of pistol- whipping a bolo-tied clerk
surging through him. Toby looks out
the windscreen languidly. He’ll get no
pleasure from this sorry business. There
are still two more branches to hit.
They roll on, past the empty parking
lots and loan shark hoardings. Past the
oil derricks pumping outside a closed-
down gas station. This is modern Texas,
cowboy, where those left behind have
Harley-Davidson handlebars for facial
Cowboys
and injured
An honest look at
the wreckage and
destitution of modern
Texas’ parched
dustbowls.
FILM
by James Robins
HACKSAW RIDGE
directed by Mel Gibson
D
uring May 1945, Private Desmond
Doss of Virginia spent a month
scrambling over Okinawa’s blasted
landscape. On his first day of action,
he rescued 75 wounded comrades, lowering
them down a 120m cliff-face with nothing
but rope and his bare hands. A day later,
he saved another man, dragging him from
God-given
atonement
Mel Gibson’s
overflowing doses
of religious zealotry
foul up a hero’s tale.
Hacksaw Ridge: nothing happens without
intervention from the Almighty.