Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

proud_luddite In rural Texas, two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) who have had difficult lives are robbing small banks to save the family farm. Two rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) are assigned to solve the series of crimes.In some ways, "Hell or High Water" resembles "Bonnie and Clyde". Once we know the plight of the robbers, we viewers end up sympathizing with them despite their occasional brutality.The film has a good chase scene in the second half though compared to other past crime capers (of which there are many), the action is more steady than exciting. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The movie's strength is mainly in the dialogues: those between the two brothers and those between the two rangers.The Bridges character is near retirement. He is smart and likeable in some ways but acts like a dumb ass when he makes racial taunts to his long-time colleague whose heritage is half Native American and half Mexican. Birmingham's reactions to the "teasing" tells a lot in subtle ways; there is offense mixed with a history of accepting the rudeness. Despite this tension, it is clear the long-time colleagues respect each other.There is an underlying theme that represents our modern times: that many people, like the robber brothers, are living in hard financial times and it is the banks who are regarded as the true villains. It's rather courageous and rare for a modern film to challenge the status quo this way. Add to this the bonus of a cameo appearance by Margaret Bowman as a waitress in a small town dive - someone who seems to have been born in a swamp.

B Fitz This movie dragged on for me. It was just a bit above a total grade B movie but definitely NOT worth my time. Credibility stretching reality bothered me. I especially disliked the Texas oriented gun culture. At one robbery one gun packing guy on the floor sneaks it out to try to be a hero. It ends badly for him as it does for the guard. Immediately after that the ruckus attracts about a dozen gun packing 2Nd Amendment hero wannabes that come "heroically" blazing guns afire after the 2 bad guys. In spite of riddling their pickup truck with dozens of penetrating rounds they receive only ONE flesh wound! Then in a follow on fire fight the dozen "heroes" are assaulted by the bad guy with an automatic weapon rapidly firing about 4 FULL cases of ammo at reasonably close range missing everyone. REALLY???? Well it adds excitement for sure. But it moves the movie down to the level of a cheap guy flick with action.The 2nd Amendment Texans of course will feel vindicated other than the fact that had no gun been pulled, no one would have been injured in the robbery, much less killed. The implied harmless ness of major gunfire in this movie is disturbingly unreal and is the final "shot" that makes is a cheap thriller.

LilyDaleLady I'm torn on this film; it has many good points including first rate performances from Jeff Bridges and some of the supporting actors. The music is terrific and the cinematography is gorgeous -- though I was disappointed to find out it was all filmed in NEW Mexico (us Easterners were probably easily fooled -- but don't Texans and New Mexicans sense this right off? Perhaps the crew -- 90% British -- don't see any differences between those two states!)It's also very funny in places. But HOHW has a fatal flaw, and that is....plot holes the size of Jupiter.The biggest and most glaring: EVERYTHING in the film hinges on the two bank robbing brother's motivation to save the family farm from foreclosure, by robbing one local bank chain of the petty cash in the drawer (and then laundering that money at casinos, and ultimately, paying their late mother's reverse mortgage off with the stolen cash).I am gobsmacked the film's writers did not bother to research this AT ALL. That is not how reverse mortgages even work. You do not even have to make payments on a reverse mortgage, so it could not be "in arrears". And the mother borrowed only $25,000? That's chump change -- the ranch is clearly hundreds of acres (we see it at the end, stretching to the horizon) and worth at the rock-bottom minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars BEFORE THEY FIND OIL ON IT. So the brothers were never "poor" as Chris Pine alleges at the end, when claiming that's why he robbed banks -- so his two sons would not "grow up poor like he did". OK -- except he wasn't poor. And most people provide for their sons by GETTING A JOB. And maybe, moving somewhere where there are more jobs. Or by SELLING the land (so you could pay off the reverse mortgage legally) and then still having anywhere from several hundred thousand dollars to MILLIONS OF DOLLARS (!!!).On top of this, it is infuriating to think the filmmakers think if you cannot provide your children with MILLIONS OF DOLLARS...they are "poor". There is in their eyes nothing in between foreclosure/welfare and MILLIONS? Nothing like, say, "an ordinary job" and "paying your bills" and "living an honest life"?It's like some weird justification for armed robbery, to "get even" with banks -- who are apparently supposed to forgive all loans, and never demand repayment, and of course, we all know if you own property -- it is "yours" for all eternity, even if you don't pay your taxes, bills or mortgage loans.On top of this; HOW can people who KNOW they have just won the biggest life lotto of all -- owning a ranch pumping $600,000 worth of oil profits every year and ergo, worth at least $20 million -- be whining about "how poor they are" and "how rough they have it" and how they have to be criminals??? That defies all credulity. Most people in their shoes would be on spending sprees with the royalty checks.Some other posters have also noted other stupid stuff like "casinos have cameras" and "since they are already suspect (definitely the Ben Foster character, as he's been shot by police), it would be easy to work backwards, and realize Chris Pine paid off the mortgage on his ranch in a suspicious fashion, and with checks from a casino". The most mundane detective work would have turned up the casino laundering trick and bingo, case solved.Lastly: at the end, Chris Pine is GUT SHOT, and has a bullet in him, but it hardly effects him -- he's not rolling on the ground screaming in pain or dying from peritonitis -- and how did he get the bullet out? going to the hospital would have pointed a big fat arrow at him as part of the robbery team. Did he dig it out himself and do home surgery? WTF?Too bad that nobody edited this or read it before filming, or had a bank loan officers give it a once over -- the devil is in the details, and these flaws keep this from being anything more than a mediocre shoot 'em up robbery film (with debts, also noted by others, to "No Country For Old Men").

nate-204 While this movie held my attention and had *excellent* cinematography, the rest of it fell flat. It's hard to call this a 'character study' when all the characters are essentially the same the entire movie. It's SO slow moving, with sparse and plain dialog with an ending that's more of a 'huh'?? This could have been so much better expanding on any of the backstory or truly making any of these characters real, but I didn't get much out of it. I continue to call BS on many movies nominated for an academy award these days. I wouldn't call this a Western Either. Just the main pairs of characters having similar dialog and otherwise just hanging out together. In short, I was expecting a lot more.