![]() Even at their most frustrated and fractious, they have a silent devotion for each other, and they guard each other’s backs. Bank-robbing brothers Tanner (Ben Foster) and Toby Howard (Chris Pine) are a modern version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with just as little need to talk about why they do what they do. The characters’ macho codes are just as old-school and unspoken. The attitude toward guns, steers, and land aren’t the only parts of Hell or High Water that draw an unbroken line back to the Old West. And at one point, it becomes clear that half the men in the region carry concealed weapons, and they’re willing to form an old-fashioned posse for a high-speed chase on a moment’s notice. A Texas Ranger makes a convincing case comparing the predatory lending habits and subsequent foreclosures of West Texas banks to the Army forcibly pushing Native Americans off their land. Another rider, herding cattle ahead of a raging prairie fire, pauses to openly marvel that he’s still doing this in the 21st century. ![]() One old-timer hitches up his horse at a gas station as if he was hitting up the local saloon in some dusty frontier town. David Mackenzie’s terrifically tense Western Hell or High Water is set in the present, but it keeps emphasizing that in some key ways, life hasn’t changed in West Texas since pioneer days.
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