Went the other night to
see the film Hell or High Water, the very
unoriginality of whose title tells you a lot about it in advance. It is possible to see a lot of influences in
it, whether they are actually there or not.
From Hud, The Last Picture Show, Paris,
Texas, No Country for Old Men to Killing them Softly (though not nearly
as bad as that particular turkey).
The former influences
are best seen in its lingering camerawork taking in the Llano Estacado
landscape of West Texas, and the small flyblown towns that inhabit the area. Yet though atmospherically photographed, the
cinematography seems less to support the story than the story to support the
cinematography. Unlike the first four
movies mentioned earlier, the two aspects don’t appear to seamlessly meld. In places, it comes perilously close to being
a sort of still-life with incidental action, as in the scene where the two brothers
act out a bit of redundant horseplay against the main canvas of a huge and
horizonless Texas evening sky.
Overall it gives one the
impression almost of a painting by numbers effort. Let’s throw in a bit of the cinematography of
The Last Picture Show, Paris Texas, etc. And while we’re at it, let’s borrow aspects
of the character of the sheriff in No
Country for Old Men. Finally, let’s
try add a bit of social significance, though not in the embarrassingly clunking
manner it was larded into Killing Them
Softly.
Here the facts of
economic collapse and unemployment and the ruthless predatoriness of banks are
central to the story. Yet in a certain
obscure sense it doesn’t really convince—there is a sense almost of observing
life from a distance, of rehearsing the liberal stereotypes that in Hollywood tend
to take the place of actual lived experience.
It is a film that from
its opening scenes gives the impression of throwing shapes—yes, really, that is the best description of it. Throwing shapes! There is nothing in it that is not borrowed,
consciously or unconsciously, from somewhere else. It is a film not reflecting life so much as
reflecting other films. It has nothing
new to say.
As well, there is what
comes across as a totally hamfisted attempt to deal with the matter of racial
banter, so untrue to life and so incompetently handled as to make one almost go
down on one’s knees to political correctness.
That being said, it is
not a bad film. What’s done in it tends
to be well done. But it is not a film
deserving of the four of five stars that have been awarded to it by so many
critics.
Two, maybe two and a
half.
Well, that’s my
opinion.
