Hell or High Water
David Mackenzie · 2016
Two Texas brothers rob branches of the bank that is about to foreclose on their family's ranch, and a pair of Texas Rangers race to catch them before they can complete enough robberies to save the land. David Mackenzie's film is a modern Western about who the real thieves are.
Techniques Used
4 techniques identified in this film
Small Town as Moral Geography
CinematographyThe use of a specific town or region whose streets and landmarks encode the social values the characters are navigating.
How this film uses it
Giles Nuttgens shoots West Texas's abandoned storefronts, payday loan signs, and foreclosure notices as the film's moral landscape — the economic devastation that produced the brothers' crime visible in every town they pass through, the setting functioning as the film's political argument.
Revisionist Genre Argument
NarrativeA film that inhabits a genre's conventions in order to systematically examine and dismantle them.
How this film uses it
Taylor Sheridan places the bank robbery in the Western genre's moral framework and then inverts it — the banks are the outlaws, the brothers are the dispossessed farmers, the Ranger is the lawman enforcing a system the film exposes as corrupt, the genre rearranged to point at the actual theft.
Triangulated Moral Ambiguity
NarrativeA three-way structural arrangement in which each character represents a different moral position, preventing any single perspective from claiming the high ground.
How this film uses it
Toby is moral necessity, Tanner is recklessness, Marcus is institutional authority — and Mackenzie refuses to assign heroism to any of the three, making the film's moral argument a conversation between positions rather than a verdict.
Observational Restraint
NarrativeA filmmaking approach that withholds explanation, allowing behavior and environment to communicate character meaning without dialogue.
How this film uses it
Mackenzie films the brothers' relationship without backstory — their dynamic visible in how they argue, how they protect each other, how they share silence — the love between them communicated through behavior rather than declared in any scene of explicit emotion.
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