Hell Or High Water Analysis

Critique #1

On Tuesday night, a few of my friends and I went to watch “Hell or High Water,” a movie I knew nothing about. I rarely watch TV, let alone have time to watch movie previews. The film starts out immediately with a bank robbery where vulgar language is used as they steal the money. From the first scene, the audience is able to get an idea of the personalities of the two Howard brothers, who are robbing the bank. Tanner Howard is the robber shouting obscene language and aggressively grabbing the woman, while Toby Howard tries to protect her in order to calm his brother down before he hurts her. From this very first scene, we are able to see Toby as a sensitive, caring brother, while Tanner is a criminal who has done past crimes, who uses obscene language, and has no self-control. Tanner punches the bank teller in the nose and as they drive off Toby comment on the fact that no one was

The old Sheriff drives onto the ranch and converses with Toby about his motivations and justifications. No violence breaks out the two, but rather an explosive conversation that seems to put everyone’s lives at ease and come to peace with each other. The movie comes to and end as old western music begins to play and the camera films out over the weeds of the country land. The film was anything a person would want a western film to be, it was comic, tragic, reflective, at times violent but necessary. Both the brothers and the two Sheriffs at times were both the protagonists and antagonists. The brothers were breaking the law, but doing it for their family so you wanted them to get away with the crime. Yet, the Sheriffs were doing their job to stop the brothers, yet when the sheriff gets shot, the brother becomes the antagonists. The whole film is a battle between the two and you never really know which side to be on. Overall, I really enjoyed the film, and I would have never seen this type of film if it weren’t for this