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Was No Country for Old Men too smart and slow for you? Loved the gunfights and the misanthropic cowboy glamour, but maybe Javier Bardem's haircut made you uncomfortable? Try Jeff Bridges' new Western genre vehicle, Hell or High Water. Like its predecessor, it's set in economically depressed West Texas and features desert car chases, jaw-dropping cinematography and a trigger-happy sociopath ex-con. But this time there is a "that's what she said" joke and bigger explosions.
After his mother dies, Toby Howard (Chris Pine) is desperate to stop the Texas Midlands bank from foreclosing on his family ranch. He enlists his wild-card brother Tanner (Ben Foster) to help him rob a string of Midlands branches. By stealing small bills and switching them out at a casino after every heist, Toby hopes to avoid detection and hold onto the property long enough to cash in on its wealth of newly discovered oil.
But the brothers' plan is complicated by another odd-couple pairing. Marcus (Jeff Bridges), a racist curmudgeon of a detective, is investigating the robberies as his final case before he's forced to retire. Which means it is also the last case where his half-Native American, half-Mexican partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) will have to submit to Marcus' near-constant racial abuse, which ranges from "half breed" insults to Mexican jokes.
The script tries hard to emphasize the edginess of Bridges' political incorrectness, and at first, that feels like a shortcoming. It would be, if the jabs were included only to amuse a certain segment of the audience and scandalize another. But the nearly divine stoicism Alberto shows in the face of Marcus' nastiness hints at something more. In a Skype interview with WW, Birmingham said the hardest part was figuring out how his character would respond to being taunted. Marcus' racism represents "paradigms of thought that people still hold onto," Birmingham says. "Sometimes they're generational, sometimes they're regional."
Standout acting elevates what could have been a clumsy script from writer Taylor Sheridan (the former Sons of Anarchy star). Bridges and Birmingham find nuance in their pigeonhole of reluctant partners in crime-fighting, and Foster's brand of ruthless charisma as Tanner forces the audience to constantly re-examine its allegiances. The result is a film that never quite goes where you expect.
Critic's Grade: [B+]
SEE IT: Hell or High Water is rated R. It opens Friday at Fox Tower.
Willamette Week