Film Review: Hell or High Water (2016)

If this summer's film slate of superheroes and reboots and sequels, all of them CGI-heavy, has tired you out, cast your eyes on Hell or High Water. It's a modern western set in the driest, most destitute corner of Texas that borrows tropes from the horse-powered westerns of yesteryear to tell the story of two brothers who rob banks to pay off the mortgage on their mother's land.

The brothers are Tanner and Toby. Tanner (Ben Foster) is a career criminal and all-around hell raiser. Toby (Chris Pine) is a divorced dad who needs to pay off the mortgage on his late mother's land. The land isn't worth much, but the oil underneath it, which has just been discovered, is worth $50k a month. But if he can't pay off the mortgage the bank will get the land and the oil. Toby has not, we gather, been a good husband or father, so as an act of redemption he wants to put the land in a trust for his kids once he's cleared the mortgage. The amount he needs isn't much, but it involves robbing banks in a variety of flyblown towns across west Texas. Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) is soon on their trail.

What's striking about this film is its conscious effort to harken back to the American filmmaking aesthetic of the late 1960s and early '70s. Films like Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands are obvious visual influences, also the use of local, non-professional actors in small roles. Director David Mackenzie has clearly absorbed the feel of those films and tried to bring them back to life, particularly in the handling of the brothers. Tanner and Toby are the kind of antiheroes that were common in the '70s. They aren't well-equipped in temperament or skills to deal with normal life and have ended up living on the fringes of society, which also makes them unconsciously anti-establishment, a key element of the films of that era.

The most modern aspect of the film is its emphasis on the poverty and despair gripping this part of world. Billboards for payday loan  and debt relief companies dot the landscape, most businesses are shuttered, and the population seems either very old or very unemployed. This is Tea Party America, even though the film never makes any direct political statements along these lines. The bad guys, as in so many old westerns, are the banks, who are eagerly foreclosing on anyone and everything. A briefly glimpsed piece of graffiti at the beginning of the film neatly captures the film's political viewpoint: THREE TOURS OF IRAQ BUT I NEVER GOT A BAILOUT. Sadly, the film is content to just blame the banks rather than drilling down deeper to the politicians who are the banking industry's enablers. The western tropes are cleverly woven through the film, especially during a climactic bank heist that results in an impromptu posse chasing the brothers out of town, and, like the legendary James brothers, Toby and Tanner receive protection from some of the locals. Nobody likes banks.

But this isn't a perfect film. The character of Tanner is too much of a generic crazy cowboy, and Ben Foster overacts accordingly. Chris Pine as Toby is fine, but it's not a very demanding role since he's mostly asked to just look hurt or depressed. Although kudos to Pine or the director for the visual motif of Toby constantly hanging his head down as though literally beaten down by Fate. Only at the very end do we see him standing proud. There are some plot holes, and some awkward and superfluous scenes (did we really need to see Tanner bonking a hotel receptionist?) that mar what's otherwise a lean and efficient film. Part of the blame for that, aside from the script, might be due to the director being a Brit. This kind of gritty, regional story is hard for outsiders to get right when it comes to the details, and Mackenzie is sometimes tone deaf when it comes handling his Texan characters. On the plus side, you can count on Jeff Bridges getting an Oscar nom for best supporting actor.

Eight Actors Who Should Fire Their Agents

Legendary agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar. His white Persian cat had the day off.

One of the mysteries of the Hollywood universe is how some good actors consistently end up in cruddy films, and yet others somehow miss out on that one big film that would catapult them to superstardom. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in their agents. It is, after all, the modern-day Irving "Swifty" Lazars who vet the scripts and directors before ringing up their client to let them know that, fingers crossed, they're going to be getting the lead in Police Academy vs Predator. Clearly, the best career advice for the following list of actors is to dump their representation and find some other way of finding roles; the Magic 8-Ball might be one option.

8. Mira Sorvino

Let's see; beautiful Mira is fluent in French and Mandarin Chinese; she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard;  she won an Oscar in 1995 for Mighty Aphrodite; and since then she's done...nothing, Nothing worthwhile, that is. Her IMDB CV since Aphrodite reads like the contents of a DVD sale bin at Wal-Mart: a lot of schlocky action films and others that are probably part of some film tax credit dodge. If it's true there's a conspiracy against brainy women in Hollywood then Sorvino is the poster child for it.

7. Clive Owen

Poor Clive Owen; it seems like yesterday he was on the short list to be the next James Bond, and now he's stuck doing the action films Daniel Craig turns down. Shoot 'Em Up, The International,  Derailed and Killer Elite represent the stuff star actors do on their way up or down. Owen is in his prime and he really only has Children of Men on the plus side of the ledger. And he'll have to win at least two Oscars to make up for King Arthur.

6. Matthew McConaughey

If Clive Owen's problem is too many action films, Matthew's curse is too few. This is one of the most macho, virile actors around, and just when you think he's going to become the next big he-man actor he turns around and does some desperately witless rom-com.   U-571 was followed by The Wedding Planner; Reign of Fire by How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days; and what does he follow up The Lincoln Lawyer with? Magic Mike! A chick flick about male strippers! The only way forward for Matthew is for he and Clive Owen to switch agents and thereby rescue two careers.

5. Eddie Murphy

Some might say Eddie is his own worst enemy when it comes to picking roles, but the issue here is that he's a fine comic actor who's consistently been willing to whore his talents in any jerky comedy that came with a big paycheque. Check him out in Bowfinger and The Nutty Professor and you see someone who has a Peter Sellers-like ability to create and inhabit fully-realized comic characters. Most comedians play one character the entirety of their career (step forward, Adam Sandler), but Murphy can do much, much better. It's time for Eddie to stop letting his posse choose his scripts.

4. Alec Baldwin

If any actor deserves to get a mulligan on their career it's Baldwin. Turns out he's one of the best comic actors around, but until 30 Rock came along he'd been wasting his time trying to play it straight and macho in dire efforts like The Getaway and The Shadow. His agent was apparently blinded by Alec's leading man good looks and figured comedy was beneath him.

3. Geena Davis

She can play it sexy, tough or funny, but apparently she can't survive her agent's decision to put her in Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight. That pair of bombs effectively ended Geena's place on the A-list, and since then she's been reduced to playing a supporting role to a CGI mouse in three Stuart Little films. Her agent couldn't find her at least one rom-com?

2. Steve Martin

It's possible that Steve and Eddie Murphy share the same agent, because Martin can also be accused of wasting his talents in a string of family-friendly comedies like Father of the Bride, Cheaper by the Dozen and Parenthood. And there's no explaining his participation in the jaw-droppingly racist Bringing Down the House. Steve was once a wild and crazy guy, and his early films, The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and The Man with Two Brains, reflect that persona. Perhaps Steve spent too long working at Disneyland in his youth, because he's played things pretty safe for a long time now.

1. Jeff Bridges

This might seem like an odd choice, and it's definitely too late in the day for him to switch agents, but it seems to me Jeff could have had a much more spectacular career. He's possibly the best actor of his generation, but somehow he's never got the big hit or the big role. His agent certainly tried. Bridges got the lead roles in films that were supposed to be big, like King Kong, Starman, Tron and Heaven's Gate, but they all turned out to be different flavours of turkey. Take a moment to imagine if Jeff had had Harrison Ford's agent. Jeff Bridges as Han Solo? as Indiana Jones? Those films would all have been even better with Bridges on board. In fact, most any big film of the 1970s and '80s would, in my opinion, would have been better with him in it. It could even be a drinking game: you and your friends name any random quality film from the last 40 years, and if a majority agrees that the film would be even better with Bridges at the top of the bill then everyone downs a shot. You'll be falling down drunk in no time.

Film Review: Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)

In 1974 I was 17 and only one year away from being legally eligible to see the R-rated Thunderbolt and Lightfoot in the theatre. It was a film I wanted to see very badly because it offered the combination of Clint Eastwood, violence and female nudity. My peers and I all tried to get in to see it, and we all failed. Theatres in Winnipeg took R-ratings very seriously. I finally saw it maybe 5 or 6 years later and thought it was pretty damn cool, just what I was hoping for.

I saw it again this past week and have to revise my opinion somewhat. While in most respects it remains a typical example of 1970s action movies, there are some odd angles to it that are worth a second look. The first is the bromance between Clint Eastwood (Thunderbolt) and the much younger Jeff Bridges (Lightfoot). In 1974 bromance was a term that was twenty years away from being invented, but the relationship between the two leads in this film has to be the template for all the movie bromances that followed. The duo meet cute (in action movie terms), do some bonding over beers and bimbos, and then consummate their relationship with a bank robbery in Montana. What's a bit different about this bromance is that Thunderbolt and Lightfoot are so visibly taken with each other. They do everything but exchange friendship rings. There isn't quite a homoerotic vibe to their relationship, but their enthusiasm for each other is a bit odd for the standards of the '70s. Of course, this bromance shouldn't really be a surprise given that the film was written and directed by Michael Cimino. Cimino later did The Deer Hunter, the grand opera of bromances.

Thunderbolt meets the '70s quota for gratuituous female nudity, but it does so with a leering, hairy-palmed awkwardness that makes it feel like Cimino might have penned the script when he was sixteen. What's odder is that sometimes the standard male heterosexual lustfulness spills over into something gayer. In once scene a brutish character played by George Kennedy insists that Lightfoot describe a naked woman he saw that day. Lightfoot teases him with the description and then gives him a mock kiss a la something Bugs Bunny would do to Elmer Fudd. Also, as part of the heist Lightfoot has to dress in drag and attract the sexual attention of a clerk. Another scene has a minor character telling Thunderbolt about a prank he pulled involving sticking his dick in another man's hand. Sometimes you have to wonder what audience Cimino thought he was writing for. And I won't even mention the plentiful use of phallic symbols.

The last major oddity is the ending, which turns what has been a nasty, rude, tough, fun heist film into something sadder and more serious. The heist, as is often the case in films like this, goes badly awry. George Kennedy double-crosses Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, knocking them both out in the process, and putting Lightfoot down with a particularly vicious kick to the head. Kennedy meets a grisly end shortly thereafter and T & L escape. The next day our two penniless heroes are thumbing a ride and come upon $500,000 stashed from a previous robbery of the same bank (it all makes sense in the context of the story) inside a one-room schoolhouse now being used as museum. This looks like a happy ending, but the kick Lightfoot took has caused serious brain damage, and in the last 6 or 7 minutes of the film we see him go from dazed to dopey to partially paralyzed to dead. It's a shocking and bleak twist to the end and it seems to be an oblique commentary on Vietnam. The Thunderbolt character is described at several points as a Korean War hero, and one of the last things Lightfoot says before he dies is that he now feels like a hero because he's finally accomplished something: he pulled off his role in the robbery. Like the Vietnam War, Thunderbolt ends with nothing really accomplished and a dead young man.

Thunderbolt is mostly well-made, with some nice cinematography, brisk action sequences and a scene-stealing performance from Jeff Bridges in one of his earliest roles.The plot has one or two holes, but otherwise Thunderbolt is an entertaining crime flick, albeit one that's a bit odd and pervy, but that only makes it more interesting.

Film Review: True Grit (2010) vs. True Grit (1969)

After recently seeing the Coen brothers True Grit for the second time (on DVD), and having seen the John Wayne-starring version on numerous occasions, I can definitely say that...I'm not sure which is better.

Let's begin with the stars.  Jeff Bridges is a masterful actor, better than John Wayne ever was, but in this role he gives a rather predictable performance. He talks in a gruff, growly monotone, and basically tries to let Charles Portis' brilliant dialogue do the work for him. Wayne, to be honest, hammed it up. He set the John Wayne dial at 11.  Bridges creates a more believable character, but Wayne extracted more entertainment value out of the role.

Moving down the cast list, Matt Damon and Hailee Stanfield are a quantum improvement over Glen Campbell and Kim Darby. Campbell shouldn't have been allowed in home movies let alone feature films, and Darby I found irritating instead of determined. When it comes to the minor characters, however, the older version wins hands down, with A-list character actors such as Robert Duvall as Ned Pepper, Dennis Hopper as Moon, and Strother Martin as Stonehill, the horse trader unlucky enough to barter with Mattie Ross. For the sake of comparison, check out Martin's scene with Mattie and compare it with the Coen version using an actor named Dakin Matthews. The two sequences are virtually identical, but Martin turns the scene into a small comic gem. Matthews just reads the script.

The 1969 True Grit has a conventionally pretty look to it. The Coens make their True Grit look, well, gritty. And that's a plus. The Portis novel was a de-romanticized version of the Wild West, and the Coens remain true to that idea by showing us buildings and people that almost give off the smell of manure, sweat and tobacco. This tough look also makes Mattie's journey into the wilderness seem that much more daunting and dangerous. The 1969 version made the trip seem like a bit of a holiday.

The backbone of any western is the action sequences, and in this regard the Coens fall flat. Henry Hathaway, the 1969 director, had been directing westerns and action movies since the advent of sound, and it shows. His action sequences are fluid and energetic. The Coens, on the other hand, have a static, unimaginative approach to action. This may be where their committee approach to directing lets them down. The scene in the dugout cabin where Rooster Cogburn questions Moon and Quincy is a good comparison point.  Hathaway builds tension in the scene by having Moon become increasngly agitated due to his leg wound.  He also parallels this action by having Quincy become more violent as he cleans a turkey carcass (the Coens omit the turkey), while at the same time he's showing us Mattie becoming more distressed by the rising tension and anger. When violence suddenly erupts it's like a hissing boiler suddenly exploding. The Coen version has Moon talking in a flat montone up until he's mortally wounded by Quincy. The whole scene is shot with a minimum of fuss and a minimum of excitement.

The winner? Both. I just wish Glen Campbell hadn't been in the original and that the Coens could have had a coaching session from John Woo.