While 'Hell Or High Water (2016)' has a few overwrought and oddly expositional moments, it's an excellent heist thriller that uses its palpable sense of place and brilliantly well-realised characters to totally compound you within its incredibly realistic and wonderfully tactile world. It immerses you in the dusty planes of a 'Neo-Western' New Mexico with confidence and ease. There's a lot to unpack thematically, from the phenomenal mirror-image brother relationships to the thinly veiled political message, and most moments, even the exciting and genuinely tense 'action' sequences, are conveyed with a subtlety that makes for a much quieter, more character-driven affair than usual. It has proper stakes and emotionally affecting moments of all kinds, and it certainly leaves a lasting impression. 8/10

Hell Or High WaterThe problem in a character driven movie is that if it ain't interesting, gripping or cognitive the feature starts to fade off slowly and the only thing remains is the ticking clock which takes too much of its time to finish of what was started. David Mackenzie is no short on execution but doesn't seek attention and fails to utilize the script by Taylor Sheridan which frankly had more potential than it was projected. Jeff Bridges is straight out amazing along with a great cast like Chris Pine and Ben Foster who are giving their all in. Hell Or High Water is not the cure, its the disease that even though slowly but surely is taking away the essence (brilliant screenplay, stellar performances and even background score) out of it.

A by-the-books bank robbing flick that could best be described as No Country for Old Men-adjacent for several reasons, one being Jeff Bridges (who, at his age, is doing his best to corner the market on ornery, hardheaded, no-nonsense old men that groan all of their lines) who plays a character cut from the exact same cloth as Tommy Lee Jones's was. It's what you'd expect a movie about two brothers in Texas robbing banks would be. But it's not trying to change conventions, instead focusing on being a "really good one of those," with solid work on both sides of the camera.

I'm torn on this film; it has many good points including first rate performances from Jeff Bridges and some of the supporting actors. The music is terrific and the cinematography is gorgeous -- though I was disappointed to find out it was all filmed in NEW Mexico (us Easterners were probably easily fooled -- but don't Texans and New Mexicans sense this right off? Perhaps the crew -- 90% British -- don't see any differences between those two states!)It's also very funny in places. But HOHW has a fatal flaw, and that is....plot holes the size of Jupiter.The biggest and most glaring: EVERYTHING in the film hinges on the two bank robbing brother's motivation to save the family farm from foreclosure, by robbing one local bank chain of the petty cash in the drawer (and then laundering that money at casinos, and ultimately, paying their late mother's reverse mortgage off with the stolen cash).I am gobsmacked the film's writers did not bother to research this AT ALL. That is not how reverse mortgages even work. You do not even have to make payments on a reverse mortgage, so it could not be "in arrears". And the mother borrowed only $25,000? That's chump change -- the ranch is clearly hundreds of acres (we see it at the end, stretching to the horizon) and worth at the rock-bottom minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars BEFORE THEY FIND OIL ON IT. So the brothers were never "poor" as Chris Pine alleges at the end, when claiming that's why he robbed banks -- so his two sons would not "grow up poor like he did". OK -- except he wasn't poor. And most people provide for their sons by GETTING A JOB. And maybe, moving somewhere where there are more jobs. Or by SELLING the land (so you could pay off the reverse mortgage legally) and then still having anywhere from several hundred thousand dollars to MILLIONS OF DOLLARS (!!!).On top of this, it is infuriating to think the filmmakers think if you cannot provide your children with MILLIONS OF DOLLARS...they are "poor". There is in their eyes nothing in between foreclosure/welfare and MILLIONS? Nothing like, say, "an ordinary job" and "paying your bills" and "living an honest life"?It's like some weird justification for armed robbery, to "get even" with banks -- who are apparently supposed to forgive all loans, and never demand repayment, and of course, we all know if you own property -- it is "yours" for all eternity, even if you don't pay your taxes, bills or mortgage loans.On top of this; HOW can people who KNOW they have just won the biggest life lotto of all -- owning a ranch pumping $600,000 worth of oil profits every year and ergo, worth at least $20 million -- be whining about "how poor they are" and "how rough they have it" and how they have to be criminals??? That defies all credulity. Most people in their shoes would be on spending sprees with the royalty checks.Some other posters have also noted other stupid stuff like "casinos have cameras" and "since they are already suspect (definitely the Ben Foster character, as he's been shot by police), it would be easy to work backwards, and realize Chris Pine paid off the mortgage on his ranch in a suspicious fashion, and with checks from a casino". The most mundane detective work would have turned up the casino laundering trick and bingo, case solved.Lastly: at the end, Chris Pine is GUT SHOT, and has a bullet in him, but it hardly effects him -- he's not rolling on the ground screaming in pain or dying from peritonitis -- and how did he get the bullet out? going to the hospital would have pointed a big fat arrow at him as part of the robbery team. Did he dig it out himself and do home surgery? WTF?Too bad that nobody edited this or read it before filming, or had a bank loan officers give it a once over -- the devil is in the details, and these flaws keep this from being anything more than a mediocre shoot 'em up robbery film (with debts, also noted by others, to "No Country For Old Men").