Hell or High Water

After Oscar season, I usually find myself playing catch-up, trying to see some of the acclaimed and nominated films that I missed in theaters. This week, I finally had a chance to see Hell or High Water, the elegiac western noir starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Jeff Bridges. 

 

One convention of film noir is the ambiguous protagonist. Film noir leading characters are never outright heroes nor are they always straight-up villains. They’re usually morally ambiguous people who are a combination of selfishness and greed along with a warped but strong personal code. They’re usually driven by something like greed or revenge but they also have their own sense of wrong or right.  This is absolutely true of Hell or High Water, the story of Toby and Tanner Howard, two Texan brothers whose mother died of a long, lingering illness and left their ranch on the verge of belonging to the unscrupulous Texas Midlands Bank.

Chris Pine plays Toby, the divorced father of two who has always tried to stay on the straight and narrow. Ben Foster is Tanner, the unpredictable, violent brother who has been in and out of prison for years and, as it is revealed, shot and killed their abusive father. Toby is the respectable, law-abiding one and he’s also the smart brother, so he is the one who figures out how to rob several Texas Midlands branches to pay off the debt on the ranch that’s owed to the bank. Toby knows that it’s wrong to hold people at gunpoint and steal money, but in his mind, it is more wrong for a bank to loan money to a dying woman who everyone knew could never pay it back. He isn’t stealing for personal gain, the thrill, or the glory. He’s stealing because he feels the system is rigged against people like him, his mother, and his brother. It’s a bleak crime thriller very much for our times.

Jeff Bridges plays Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton who, along with his partner Alberto Parker is on the brothers’ trail. One subtle but powerful theme throughout the film is brotherhood. We see Toby and Tanner’s familiarity and brusque macho love for each other and we see Marcus and Alberto’s antagonistic, tired tolerance for one another throughout the film. Each pair of men show their affection and devotion to one another in radically different ways, often in ways that don’t seem much like love at all. But for anyone who has brothers, it seems perfectly appropriate.

Marcus and Alberto’s relationship is particularly interesting in that Marcus is casually racist and insulting about Alberto’s Native heritage, and his partner seems like he can barely wait for the older man to retire and leave him alone. But late in the film when Alberto is shot by one of the Howard brothers, Marcus’s grief is palpable and real. It’s the part of his performance that earned Jeff Bridges the Oscar nomination he received, no doubt.

Another convention of film noir is the ambiguous ending. There are rarely, if ever, happy endings in noirs and Hell or High Water is no different. Toby and Marcus face off at the Howard family ranch. Both men have lost loved ones over the course of the film, both are weary but clear eyed about their place in the world and where they stand with one another. Rather than going with the easy Hollywood shootout or the equally easy, let-‘em-off-the-hook unambiguous happy ending, the film’s conclusion leaves the fate of the one remaining Howard brother and the now retired Texas lawman up in the air, the conclusion suspended in the tension between them.

The film shows the financial decay of some of the open, rural spaces in the American west and the personal, inner decay that can happen because of it. There are no heroes in Hell or High Water, but it does suggest that there’s a larger, villainous system at work that can push good people to go bad.

Kong: Skull Island

In movies as in life, much of one’s happiness depends on expectations. For example, back in 2005, Peter Jackson released his remake of the 1933 classic, King Kong. Because it was Peter Jackson, the genius who had just successfully helmed one of the most ambitious movie projects in history – The Lord of the Rings trilogy – and because the remake was of one of his most beloved films, one that made him want to make movies in the first place, and because it starred Oscar winner Adrian Brody and because the special effects were by Jackson’s own Oscar winning team at WETA, my expectations were sky high. I went on opening night, and I, like most of the movie-going world, was bitterly disappointed. It had all the hallmarks of a project by a director who had a free hand. It was long, overstuffed and indulgent, and just too precious at times. The sequence of Ann Darrow played by Naomi Watts having a delightfully flirty time in Central Park ice skating with Kong was just too weird. It cleared its two hundred million dollar budget by a few million, and then went on to make more overseas, so it didn’t lose money, but it was widely considered to be a misfire after the success of his Tolkein adaptations. It was largely seen as a failure because of what everyone expected. 

So this brings us to 2017’s Kong: Skull Island. Despite its A-list cast featuring Oscar winner Brie Larson along with Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, and the great John Goodman, and despite its obviously world-class special effects, I had no expectations for this movie. Based on things I’d heard from friends and colleagues, I actually expected it to be garbage. The result of these dramatically lowered expectations is that I had a great time at Skull Island, far better than I did at King Kong in 2005. Because I expected nothing, anything good was a pleasant surprise.

It’s a reimagining of the original 1933 film, updating it from the 30s to Viet Nam-era 1970s. The story is not exact but it hits many of the same beats. John Goodman plays the charismatic believer who convinces everyone else to go to the island. Tom Hiddleston is the macho leading man who looks out for Brie Larson, who plays the beauty who tames the beast. As characters, they’re all pretty underdeveloped but that’s okay because sophisticated character evolution is not the point. 

Skull Island’s obvious visual referent is Apocalypse Now. The rich, nightmarish color palate of the night scenes, the showers of sparks, the floodlights reflecting on the surface of the river, and helicopters flying into the hazy inferno of the sun are all literal grabs from the 1979 classic. They’re obvious shouts from the director saying, “Look, ma! I can do Coppola!” The other connection is to Apocalypse Now’s inspiration, Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. Tom Hiddleston’s character is named Conrad and John C. Reilly’s marooned pilot is named Marlowe, which is the name of the novel’s protagonist. (Reilly’s character is also drawn directly from Dennis Hopper’s crazed photojournalist character in Apocalypse Now, for the record.) So Skull Island is packed with references, allusions, and outright thefts, but it just doesn’t do anything in particular with its stolen treasure. None of these connections add up to anything other than as a possible test to see how many English majors are in the audience. 

Skull Island is about Kong tearing helicopters apart, the miscast action hero Tom Hiddleston using a sword to chop apart carnivorous dino-birds in slow motion, and the underused Brie Larson using dead aim to fire a flare right into a monster’s eye at 500 yards. Kong: Skull Island is pulpy and ridiculous, and I mean that in the best possible sense. Because I expected nothing, every over-the-top stunt, ridiculous line of dialogue, and elaborate Kong-inflicted death was entertaining. My ultra-low expectations were exceeded. If you go this expecting a Film with a capital F, you’ll be disappointed but if you go expecting just a fun Movie, you’ll be well rewarded.