Finally, in these torpid August weeks, a good summer movie. One with real movie stars, one grizzled (Jeff Bridges) and one young (Chris Pine), playing real human beings, and doing so without costumes and masks — well, except for the costume of a Texas Ranger and the mask that men put on when they set out to rob a bank.
The movie is Hell or High Water. Pine is the robber, Bridges the Ranger, and Ben Foster, doing his usual terrific burn, is the robber’s brother, the actual criminal in the family. This detail becomes clear as we watch their first two bank robberies go down: Pine’s character is grim and cautious and honorable, his brother is freestyling and having the time of his life. The heists themselves are nothing fancy, no Ocean’s Eleven or Michael Mann–style capers, just a series of cash grabs at the scattered branches of the Texas Midland Bank, a lender whose vulnerable outposts are scattered across the parched West Texas plains.
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