A Defiant Outlaw- Hero Ballad

Jeff Bridges and Buck Taylor’s latest Western leaves you sympathetic to the outlaws.

- Henry C. parke

You know you’re in Texas when a pair of ski-masked men rob a crowded bank and nearly every customer pulls a gun and opens fire. The impromptu posse that takes off after the robbers would throw a scare into the James Gang!

Hell or High Water is the modern-day Western story of brothers who, like Jesse James and brother Frank, have problems with banks: in this case, the bank’s imminent fore closure on Ma’s ranch. Ben Foster plays Tanner and is as frightening here, as a gregarious fellow, as he was playing Russell Crowe’s humorless wingman in 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma. He’s just out of prison, and brother Toby, played by Chris Pine (known for his role as Capt. James T. Kirk in the rebooted Star Trek), divorced and with sons to support, comes up with a wonderfully awful idea: raise the money for the mortgage by robbing branches of the bank that hold the paper.

Screened at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, the movie was originally titled Comancheria before being called Hell or High Water. Ben Foster (at left) and Chris Pine (at right) play brothers who attempt a bank robbery to save their West Texas family farm.

Hell or High Water is also the story of the pair of Texas Rangers investigating the holds-ups: widowed, soon-to-beretired Marcus (Jeff Bridges) and his esteemed, but much-badgered Comanche partner Alberto Parker (portrayed by a Comanche, Gil Birmingham—Billy Black of the Twilight films).