Film

Hell or High Water

Name: Hell or High Water
Genre: Western, Crime, Drama
Released: 2016
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gil Birmingham, Marin Ireland

Two broke Texas brothers rob small-town banks that are about to foreclose on their family's land, while a retiring Ranger and his partner close in. Taylor Sheridan's script turns a heist chase into an elegy for a vanishing rural economy — sun-bleached, unhurried, funny in flashes, and quietly devastating by the end. For anyone who wants their crime story to feel like it means something about the country it's set in.

TMDb rating

7.3

If you liked this

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But Grimmer subject matter and a much heavier emotional weight throughout.

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Brothers, found money, and a scheme that curdles fast — a tense study of how desperation and loyalty pull decent men toward ruin.

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A lighter, funnier heist among working-class Southerners who need the money — good company if you want the setup without the grief.

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Same washed-up-man-versus-a-dying-country structure and even the same genre lineage (Sheridan and Logan's director both cite classic westerns), just filtered through superhero costume.

A superhero film that plays as a straight elegiac western — an aging, damaged man protecting family in a depressed, hollowed-out America, gunslinger instincts intact.

But Comic-book violence and mutant mythology will be a hard sell if you want realism.

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