The Simple Brilliance of HELL OR HIGH WATER

Actor/Writer Taylor Sheridan has found a career path with his screenplays Sicario and now Hell or High Water, a deceptively simple parable of brotherly love and life’s tough lessons amid a Texas landscape setting.  With echoes The Asphalt Jungle and particularly Bonnie and Clyde particularly in its depiction of economic hard times forming a somber background, two brothers stage a crime spree robbing bank after bank for an extremely personal reason and pursued by a determined Texas Ranger played winningly by Jeff Bridges.

Ben Foster and Chris Pine provide stark contrast as brothers (with an intense Foster that a maniacal Jeremy Renner would be proud.) Sheridan depicts his characters as neither totally good nor bad but rather with interesting shades of grey.

The script is lean and the interplay of dialogue is a thing of beauty especially in its fatalistic prescience of fate and destiny as the criminals and law are on a violent collision course and a memorable finale.

Beautifully photographed with a complementary soundtrack of vocals and instrumentals, it’s about breaking patterns of existence and altering a way of life despite formidable obstacles. It is a fascinating journey.

**** of **** stars