The Only Flaw in Hell or High Water

Dissecting Taylor Sheridan and David Mackenzie’s near-perfect cowboy elegy

There’s a scene that takes place about a third of the way into 2016’s outstanding Hell or High Water where Texas Rangers Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham) come upon a group of cowboys guiding a herd of cattle across the highway, away from a sudden brush fire. Marcus politely checks in with the lead cow poke and says he wishes there was something they could do to help. The cowboy (in a cameo appearance by screenwriter, Taylor Sheridan), replies darkly, “Oughtta just let it turn me to ashes, put me outta my misery … 21st century I’m racing a fire to the river with a herd of cattle. And I wonder why my kids won’t do this shit for a living.”

As the cowboys cut through a fence and guide the endangered herd toward the Brazos River, Marcus tells his partner that even if they wanted to, there’s no one to call to help them. “These boys is on their own.”

The scene has no bearing on the plot of the film and its never mentioned again, yet this brief interlude is perhaps the most direct articulation of the film’s central theme: there was a time when men (men, specifically — the film is largely concerned with “exploring how men relate to men,” according to Sheridan) could earn a living and provide for their families in west Texas by doing regular, blue collar work — working the land, raising and managing cattle, etc. But that time has passed and been replaced by a world where the bank owns your land, wildfires chase your cattle, and no amount of fair work can get you out of debt.

I don’t know if Taylor Sheridan and director David Mackenzie would agree or if it was what they intended, but Hell or High Water is unambiguously anti-capitalist in its message.

The landscape of west Texas that’s depicted in the film is littered with get-out-of-debt billboards and foreclosure auction signs. The implicit threat of climate change is hinted at by the presence of fires like the one the ranchers are racing from. The world isn’t what it used to be and the working man has become a victim of craven and corrupt capitalist progress.

You don’t usually see sharp critiques of capitalism in western bank-robber stories featuring tough-guy protagonists. This dynamic is one of several ways Hell or High Water subverts narrative expectations and in the process manages to say something worthwhile and relevant about the human condition while also delivering an engrossing modern day cops-and-bank-robbers western.

The film’s main protagonist is Toby Howard (Chris Pine), a man who only sees one path to making a better life for his sons, so he has enlisted his volatile ex-con brother, Tanner (Ben Foster), to help him rob a series of small banks. The brothers are smart about their plans — they only take money from the teller drawers, no bills large than $20, just a few thousand dollars per robbery until they can raise the $40,000 they need to put their plan into motion.

Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Bridges) is the man assigned to investigate the robberies. He’s one last case away from a looming, lonely retirement. Joining Marcus on the hunt is his partner, Alberto, a Ranger of Mexican and American Indian heritage. Marcus uses Alberto’s non-white lineage for some merciless racial ribbing and the film successfully threads the delicate needle of making their relationship both strained and strengthened by the banter.

Despite being, at its core, a cops and robbers yarn, the film’s tone is restrained, even somber. It’s a slow burn, punctuated by some tense moments of peril as well as moments of true beauty and character. Without being able to look each other in the eye when they say it, the Howard brothers really love each other, despite — or perhaps because of — their shared trauma growing up with a difficult and judgmental mother and an abusive father.

Texas Rangers Marcus and Alberto may not like each other much, but their mutual respect for each other is obvious, despite the sibling-like ribbing and irritation.

— Spoilers for Hell or High Water follow from here —

Hell or High Water is really a film with two protagonists, which is usually a problem in screenwriting, I think, but here it works. Marcus and Toby are both men who belong to a world that no longer exists. The world that’s coming has no place for either of them. They both have brothers at their sides, literal and figurative, respectively, and by the end of the film, both of those brothers have been killed by the sequence of events that unfolds.

And here is where I must lay my one critique of this otherwise perfect film. In the final act, Toby’s brother Tanner leads the police on a chase to give Toby the freedom and space to make his escape and fulfill their plan. In the process, Tanner shoots and kills Alberto (the bank robber brother kills the cop brother). The death is sudden, shocking, and gruesome, and Marcus is devastated by the murder of his partner. Then, with the assistance of a local rifle-toting good-guy-with-a-gun, Marcus circles around the ridge where Tanner is perched, takes up a sniper’s position, and kills him, thus ending the bank heist spree.

In the film’s final scene, some months later, Marcus confronts Toby about the events he had set in motion that led to these deaths, and the tension between the two men is fraught with a tragic respect and mutual enmity. It’s a hell of a scene — a dénouement that pays off both emotionally and narratively. And it would have been even better with just one tweak.

If, in the gun battle between Tanner and the police, Tanner had killed Marcus instead of Alberto, and if it was then Alberto who confronts Toby in that final scene, the whole thing would have been stronger.

First, it would have been another subversion of audience expectations. Marcus is, for all intents and purposes, a co-protagonist of the film. He’s a walking trope — the old Texas Ranger on the verge of retirement doing one last case, using all his world-weary wits to bring the bad guys down. He’s witness to a changing world, with wild fires and smart phones and bank foreclosures and partners who are Mexican-Indian. It’s well-worn territory in everything from The Over the Hill Gang to No Country For Old Men.

Toby and Marcus spend most of the film on a collision course and both characters are so smart and sympathetic, yet so completely opposed to each other’s plans, we viewers are eager to see them actually confront each other. Denying us that confrontation by killing Marcus in the gun fight flies in the face of narrative convention, and that’s partly why it would have been such a strong choice.

Killing Marcus instead of Alberto would have fit better thematically too. When Alberto expresses disdain at Marcus’ endless racial jabs, Marcus tells him its the insults he’ll miss when he’s gone. Marcus means after he’s retired, but the line gains weight if its his sudden death in the third act rather than Alberto’s. Also, Marcus is the sort of man the modern world no longer has use of. He’s dreading retirement. He even says to Alberto “who knows, maybe one of these bank robbers is gonna want a gunfight and I can dodge my retirement in a blaze of glory.”

In that final scene, if Marcus is the one who is killed, then the balance between the two protagonists is maintained. One overcomes the challenge of corrupt capitalism run amok, and the other is killed by it. Then it is Alberto’s anger and grief we are left contemplating as he faces this terrible reality. Alberto doesn’t get killed because he is the new world. He’s younger, not white, still full of naive idealism (expressed by his non-cynical interest in evangelical Christian TV and music). Imagine how that final scene would resonate with Alberto sitting on Toby’s porch instead of Marcus, drinking a beer and trying to understand why his friend was killed.

ALBERTO: How did you do it? Oh never mind. I’ll figure that out in time. Why? Why did you do it? I know why your brother Tanner did it. He robbed them banks because he liked it. He shot my partner 300 yards away because he liked it, it made him feel good. And if I hadn’t blown his shit for brains out, there’d be a new truck out front with jet skis or whatever else he could think to buy. He’d spend it all just to give him an excuse to steal some more. But not you. Nah, there’s nothin’ new around here, ‘cept them pump jacks, each one of them making you in a month what you and your brother stole from all four banks combined. Help me understand that. Help me understand why four people died so you could steal money that it don’t seem you’ve spent, that it don’t seem you need.

TOBY: You got a family?

ALBERTO: My partner had a family. A big one. They don’t got no pump jacks in their back yard.

TOBY: I didn’t kill your friend.

ALBERTO: Yes you did. By setting this thing in motion. You expect me to believe your dim witted brother planned this? Oh no, this was smart. This was you.

TOBY: I been poor my whole life. So were my parents, and their parents before them. It’s like a disease passing from generation to generation. It becomes a sickness, that’s what it is. Affects every person you know. But not my boys. Not anymore. This is theirs now. Now I ain’t never killed no one in my life, but if you want me to start with you, let’s get on with it. See if you can grab that pistol before I blast you off this porch.

I actually wonder if this was the plan all along and it got changed at some point. I doubt Taylor Sheridan or David Mackenzie will ever see this essay, but if I ever got a chance to ask them a question it would be this: Was there ever a thought to have Marcus instead of Alberto be the one who’s killed by Tanner in Hell or High Water’s third act? Was it considered and rejected? If so, why? It seems so obvious to me that it would make the film’s meaning that much more potent while also subverting some cliched tropes.

Regardless of this criticism, however, Hell or High Water remains one of my favorite films of the last decade.