HELL OR HIGH WATER

Hell or High Water

Grade: B+

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Gil Birmingham

Premise: Two brothers carry out a pair of low-key busts in Texas banks, bringing a tough but elderly sheriff onto their trail

Rated R for language, bloody violence, and a scene of sexual content

Whew, finally! After three months of (mostly) dreadful big-budget, over-the-top, branded and packaged cash-grab releases that were starting to ruin even this writer’s faith in the magic of movies comes a small, low-key, well-acted cops-and-robbers yarn that feels like a breath of fresh air. Mixing a talky screenplay about good old boys and a crotchety old coot in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with simple, often breathtaking shots of western scenery, and an underlying message of humans’ morality and tendency toward violence, Hell or High Water definitely won’t be a film that captures the attention of the popular culture—and it may not be the most original one, either—but it reminds you what moviemaking can be when quality, not money, is the most important factor.

Plot

Widowed Sheriff Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) is mere weeks away from retirement when a case comes across his desk. It’s not sexy, but it catches his attention nonetheless. It seems a pair of local cowboy types has pulled off busts of two local Texas Midlands Banks, taking only the cash in the drawers and then hustling out. They tend to do so in the early morning, when the banks aren’t busy. Since there are no bodies and a rather small bottom line stolen (about $40,000), the case is far too plain to attract large-scale attention, but Sheriff Hamilton senses a chance to get back in the game and have one last adventure before he hangs up his badge. So, he and his laconic half-Native American/half-Mexican partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) hop in their truck and head out to investigate.

The good old West Texas boys carrying out the busts are a pair of brothers, one fresh from prison and both crippled by generations of poverty and the recent passing of their mother. Tanner (Ben Foster) is the hothead, a wild man who would probably rob the banks for the thrill of it, even if he got no money. Toby (Chris Pine) is the gentler soul, one who doesn’t like handling guns or harassing anybody but needs money for overdue child support and mortgage payments. After pulling off three local busts, the boys hang around a casino where they do some drinking and gambling and Toby considers how to best utilize the winnings to benefit his estranged sons. Then they decide to pull off one more bust, this one at a bigger bank, one that just so happens to be down the road from where Hamilton and Alberto have been investigating.

What Works?

Cops-and-robbers movies are always interesting, especially when you get to know both sides, and especially when they take place in Texas, where everyone is folksy, sporting cowboy hats and thick accents, and toting guns. Similar to the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men, Hell or High Water is a fine cocktail of the thrill of law and crime and the provincial touches of good old Texas. It also conjures memories of that film in that it builds slowly, bit by bit reveals the stories and lives and motivations of both sides, and yet takes it sweet time getting to anything particularly dramatic. In that way, it’s not “Hollywoodized”, which is nice. And when the drama and action comes, it makes it that much more impactful, because it feels real and lived-in and not computerized and artificial like the action in this summer’s biggest titles.

The screenplay by Taylor Sheridan—a former Sons of Anarchy actor who wrote last year’s savagely-gritty drama Sicario—is a small marvel, weaving entire lives and worlds out of fairly short conversations between people speaking in heavy accents and backwoods verbiage. Working with this fine material, the actors shine. Bridges’ Sheriff Hamilton looks and talks a lot like the actor’s take on Rooster Cogburn in the 2010 remake of True Grit, but the lawman the Oscar winner plays here is not just a seasoned, tough man, but an old man. Hamilton may have the heart of a younger, more adventurous man, but he is haunted by his increasingly solitary life and the retirement home existence that likely awaits him. Bridges, 67, is perfectly-cast. Ben Foster all but steals the show as the fierce and unpredictable Tanner, the actor rebounding nicely from his embarrassing turn in this summer’s woeful Warcraft. Star Trek’s Chris Pine is very effective as a man torn by obligations and loyalty. And Gil Birmingham plays nicely off Bridges’ old-man chatter as the butt of Sheriff Hamilton’s many jokes.

With its ranch sceneries and roads bordered by open plains, Hell or High Water looks great. It also has more than a few laughs, and yet it gradually builds the tension. Many audience members will be spellbound, waiting for things to explode. And they do.

What Doesn’t Work?

There isn’t a lot that fails to work in this well-crafted film. The movie certainly does bear a lot of similarities to many films of this genre (No Country For Old Men included), but it has a DNA all its own. My one complaint would be that, though there are life-or-death stakes present in criminals fleeing the law, the movie often feels as if it’s too simple and is going nowhere. Good as the writing and acting is, the focus is small, and once the major conflict is resolved, there aren’t a lot of places for the movie to go.

Content

Hell or High Water earns its R rating with an abundance of F-words and violence that is quite bloody when it comes. There’s also a brief scene of sexuality, though the interaction takes place in the background of the shot and nothing is clearly seen.

Bottom Line

A nice antidote for the serious moviegoer after a messy summer of underwritten and overblown big-budget misfires, Hell or High Water is a scaled-down classic cops-and-robbers story. It has well-developed characters and action scenes that aren’t blown out of proportion or coming from nowhere. A pretty hard R thanks to some salty language and a few bloody shootouts, this movie has some fantastic cinematography (beautiful landscapes), great writing, and features fine acting turns by Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, and Ben Foster.

Hell or High Water (2016)

Directed by David Mackenzie

Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan

Rated: R

Length: 102 minutes

STAR TREK: BEYOND/ SUICIDE SQUAD

THE CREW AND THE SQUAD

Late-Summer Tentpoles with Large Casts Exemplify the Best/Worst of Blockbusters

What does any great story have?

Think of a classic great story. King Arthur. Romeo & Juliet. Robin Hood. Oliver Twist. Pride & Prejudice. Frankenstein. Harry Potter. The Lord of the Rings. What do they all have?

The answer’s not hard to figure out. They all have great characters. Yes, many of those stories have action, romance, comedy, mystery, fantasy and other great elements that help make great stories, but what makes all that other stuff especially compelling, or worth getting into, are the characters. Characters you can root for. Characters you want to see live, fall in love, fight, win, achieve their destinies, have happy endings.

Two of the last big movies of this Summer 2016 season are chock-full of distinct, colorful characters. In one corner we have a jocular spaceship captain, his cool, logic-driven right hand, and their favorite ship-mates: the chatty, resourceful engineer, the feisty doctor, the plucky young pilot with a Russian accent, the beautiful, whip-smart communications officer, and the even-keeled pilot who has a young daughter as motivation to be safe and succeed on his voyages. In the other corner we have a hard-eyed, cold-blooded government operative and the band of misfits she forces to do her bidding—a quippy but deadly sharpshooter, an upbeat but unhinged former psychiatrist, a heavily-tattooed man who can shoot fire from his hands, a dirty Australian thief who throws boomerangs and likes unicorns, a man with a skin condition so bad he looks like a monster, a chuckling homicidal gangster who wears clown makeup, and a 6,000-year-old witch who takes over the body of a scientist.

The primary difference between Star Trek: Beyond and Suicide Squad is that one movie knew what to do with its characters—put them front and center, let them talk and breathe and develop, and put them in an adventure in which they can all play a part—and the other did not—hastily throwing them together in an overstuffed, poorly-edited story with a half-baked central premise and a pitiful overarching conflict. The former, a second sequel to 2009’s Star Trek reboot, told an exciting adventure but kept its familiar characters (well-established after two films and the classic TV series) at the focus of its camera no matter the expensive visual effects around them, and the latter--though admittedly introducing all but two of its characters for the first time--spent little time introducing its characters and thrust them into the midst of a whirl of effects and cuts and plotlines.

In an age when most movies of note are big-budget, effects-laden films, these two effectively capture the good and bad of the “blockbuster” as we know it. One movie cares about its characters enough to make the audience care, and the story is that much more compelling for it. The other has interesting characters but doesn’t know what to do with them, and it does its characters (and its audience) a disservice in putting them in a clunky stopgap feature.

Star Trek: Beyond                                                                   Grade: B+

Directed by Justin Lin

I’m admittedly biased because I loved the 2009 reboot and its 2013 sequel, Into Darkness, but Star Trek: Beyond will go down as the only truly good movie I saw during the summer 2016 season other than May’s Captain America: Civil War. Beyond wasn’t a movie whose release date I had circled on my calendar, but it turned out to be a far smarter, more engaging, and better-rounded film that nearly all of the bigger-name releases that came out around it.

Celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the inception of creator Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi universe, Beyond opens about halfway into the five-year mission of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Space travel is fun, sure, but being literally adrift for years has taken its toll on even the notorious adventure-lover James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), the starship’s captain. Just as his birthday arrives and the Enterprise pulls into a high-tech spaceport, the captain secretly puts in an application for a desk job, thinking he might want to settle down and get his bearings again. But when the frantic survivor (Lydia Wilson) of a ship savaged by evil extraterrestrials on a nearby planet comes begging for help, Captain Kirk immediately seeks to lend a hand. But a vicious alien ambush leaves the Enterprise a shattered, ruined hulk on a strange planet, with Captain Kirk and crewmates Spock (Zachary Quinto), Bones (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg, also a co-writer of the film), and Chekov (the late Anton Yelchin) looking for other survivors and a potential way to get back to base. Two of their good friends—Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (John Cho)—along with the rest of the surviving crew, are in a makeshift prison guarded by the forces of the evil, scaly alien Krall (Idris Elba), who seems to have an axe to grind against the very Federation which Captain Kirk and his crewmates stand for. With Krall aggressive and seeking to destroy the nearest Federation base at his earliest opportunity, Captain Kirk and the others are forced to seek help from a zebra-faced humanoid named Jayla (Sofia Boutella) in order to stop his madness.

Star Trek: Beyond hits almost all the right notes. Krall is a little weak of a villain—nowhere near as intimidating and charismatic as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan from the last installment—someone who might antagonize the crew on an average episode of the show, but most the film's elements are top-of-the-line. The special effects are great, starting with the gorgeous, unique design of the Yorktown space station at which the Enterprise docks early on, and really hitting their stride in the sensational sequence in which Krall’s minions wreck the Enterprise by attacking like insects in destructive waves of tiny ships. There are some fun, classic Star Trek-type moments—Captain Kirk riding a motorcycle around an alien prison to distract the guards during an attempted rescue, the Enterprise blasting Beastie Boys to break up an alien communication signal (“is that classical music?” a confused Dr. McCoy asks), and a starship plummeting straight off a cliff in an edge-of-your-seat maneuver. There’s also some strong sentiment, as the passing of Trek legend Leonard Nimoy is effectively written into the story, culminating in a moment when the younger Spock finds a picture of the entire cast of the original series--a moment that will surely bring a lump to the throat of hardcore Trekkies.

But, of course, what really makes Beyond work is the family-like cast. This is their third outing—almost all of them are contracted for a fourth—and these characters who go back 50 years in the pop zeitgeist are as fun and interesting as ever. I feel certain many, myself included, would watch the seven or so name characters simply interact for a couple hours and be quite satisfied, even if there was no space adventure involved. Like a great episode of a show, Beyond keeps the whole ensemble together most of the movie, but breaks off one pair for a few hugely-effective character-building moments. While Saldana’s Uhura and Cho’s Sulu aren’t given quite as much to do, Pine, Quinto, Urban and Yelchin all shine—as does newcomer Boutella, even behind the kabuki-mask makeup—while Scotty gets a much bigger, more dynamic role thanks to Pegg helping write the script. It’s a fine group that, despite the episodic nature of the these movies (in keeping with the franchise’s TV series origins), makes me want to come back for more.

The family dynamic takes on a special meaning for this film in particular, what with two of the key members of the Trek universe having passed in real life during its development. In Loving Memory of Leonard Nimoy appears mid-way through the end credits, followed shortly by the heart-tugging words For Anton, for the young actor who died in a freak accident less than two months before the movie’s release. This genuinely-good movie makes a fitting tribute.

**Star Trek: Beyond is rated PG-13 for intense action and scenes of destruction, some disturbing images, and brief language.

Suicide Squad                                                                          Grade: D

Directed by David Ayer

When March’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice met mixed (mostly-negative) reviews from critics and fans alike, many said August’s Suicide Squad—which exists in the same part of the fictional DC Comics Universe—could erase memories of that movie and redeem the DC Universe. With the Joker coming back to the series, plus a whole bunch of other notorious characters hitting the big screen for the first time—Harley Quinn, Deadshoot, Captain Boomerang, Killer Croc, etc…--Squad looked like it could be the cool, edgy shot-in-the-arm DC (and the summer movie season in general) needed.

Sadly, Suicide Squad is no better than the much-maligned Batman v. Superman. In fact, it’s arguably worse. I summed up my feelings on BvS by calling it “an overlong, overstuffed, big ugly misfire”, and Squad meets all those ignominious criteria as well. This two-hour movie is stuffed to the gills with character intros, extra plot threads, nods to different parts of the DC Universe, cheesy action sequences, musical interludes, and sorta-kinda-funny moments that would be more entertaining if they hadn’t already been in all the movie’s trailers. In contrast to Star Trek: Beyond, which acquitted its beloved, developed characters well by keeping watching them grow through their new adventure, Squad hastily introduces its characters and then hurls them into a cheesy, by-the-numbers plot.

The eccentric title characters are all introduced, and then thrust into action, by federal agent Amanda Waller (Oscar-nominee Viola Davis, playing by far the actual most intimidating character in the movie), who proposes the world counteract the threat of Superman and other powerful extraterrestrials by forming a team of criminals—“the worst of the worst”. These eccentric baddies are all in an underground prison in Louisiana. They include “Deadshot” (Will Smith), a sharpshooter who never misses; Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former psychiatrist who lost her credibility, and, it seems, her sanity, when she fell in love with the nefarious Joker; “Diablo” (Jay Hernandez), a man who can shoot fire from his hands; “Killer Croc” (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), a burly cannibal who has a skin condition that makes him look like a human/crocodile combo; “Captain Boomerang” (Jai Courtney), a rugged Australian thief; and “Slipknot” (Adam Beach), a “guy who can climb anything”. When Agent Waller puts this team of criminals in action, it’s up to decorated Special Ops vet Rick Flagg (Joel Kinnaman) to keep them in line—him, and the tiny explosive computer chips Waller had planted in each criminal’s neck as a warning to conduct themselves appropriately.

With the mysterious Batman (Ben Affleck) lurking in the background and the infamous Joker (Jared Leto) dogging their steps in an attempt to rescue his beloved Harley, the criminals are forced into action when an ancient witch takes over the body of a scientist (Cara Delevingne), turns people into faceless zombies, and tries to take over Midway City (and, tomorrow, the WORLD!!!).

Let me stop you right there. While the opening is both rushed and too long and too cluttered—with most of the characters getting at least a few moments’ introduction if not a whole montage of scenes (which Deadshot and Harley Quinn get)—the characters are eccentric enough, and Davis’ Waller convincing enough, that this all might work…if it weren’t for the witch. The witch—called “Enchantress”—is possibly the most ridiculous movie villain I’ve ever seen on the big screen. Here you have most of this movie taking place in the same moody, grittily-realistic cityscapes as Batman v Superman, and then you have the villain, a half-naked young woman wearing a chain-mail loincloth, gyrating and moaning dialogue in a hilariously-fake foreign language while CGI tentacles come out of her back and fake smoke rises from her body. Her followers—who she creates by French-kissing them—are zombies with oozing, pulsing, featureless lumps for faces. Nothing is bad quite like bad sci-fi or fantasy, and this is bad. More than once, I burst out laughing during the movie just because the movie—about a group of deadly killers pulled out of prison to try and stop a “terrifying evil force”—was just too silly for me to take.

It’s not all the witch’s fault—the rest of this isn’t exactly Shakespeare. I mean, the characters are interesting enough that, if the film around them were better written and better directed, they might really have something (like DC’s rival Marvel’s witty takes on antiheroes in Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool). But the movie has too much in it, jumps around far too much, and has too much of the witch and her (wizard? Warlock? Mummy?) brother rendered in bad CGI to be good. Even Jared Leto’s much-ballyhooed Joker is a disappointment—in his maybe ten minutes of screentime, he’s rendered as a fey, giggling goof, which might be the point of the character (being called the JOKER), but still seems like weak sauce compared to the late Heath Ledger’s depiction of a homicidal anarchist/terrorist in 2008’s Dark Knight.

For the actors, Davis fares best, her stone-faced agent a chilly baddie who could probably have her own movie. Smith is back to entertaining after a few too-serious recent outings (Focus, Concussion, the awful After Earth), and he manages pretty well. Margot Robbie has a ball throwing herself into the role of Harley Quinn—with the smudgy makeup, intriguing backstory, and life-of-the-party flair, Harley has everything…including many little character-building moments spoiled by the trailers. Still, Robbie hits a home run in this hugely-anticipated role, and most of the others fall in her wake. Joel Kinnaman’s straight-laced Flagg, surrounded by all these eccentric wackos, is flat and forgettable. Delevingne should fire her agent, her role is so embarrassing. Akinnouye-Agbaje’s Killer Croc isn’t so much a character as a scaly thing that occasionally mumbles words. Jay Hernandez tries to give Diablo a personality and a soul, but I just kept looking at him wondering why no one ever mentioned he had distracting tattoos all over his freakin’ face. Jai Courtney’s Boomerang is little more than a bunch of tiny weird character moments put together. Adam Beach’s Slipknot is just here to get his head blown off.

Needless to say, it’s disappointing that Suicide Squad falls on its face. Its main villain is pathetic, its plot flimsy, its “supervillain” characters not very super or villainous, its opening is too full, and its three endings all contradictory. It strikes the wrong tone—it makes people who had wanted to see it for months laugh at how silly and dumb it was.

***Suicide Squad is rated PG-13 for action and violent content, language, and some disturbing images

Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

Directed by Justin Lin

Screenplay by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung

Based on Characters Created by Gene Roddenberry

Rated PG-13

Length: 122 minutes

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Idris Elba and Sofia Boutella; Also Featuring Lydia Wilson and Shohreh Aghdashloo

Suicide Squad (2016)

Directed and Written for the Screen by David Ayer

Based on the Comic Book by John Ostrander

Rated PG-13

Length: 123 minutes

Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevingne, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Karen Fukuhara, Ike Barinholtz, and Jared Leto; with Adam Beach as Slipknot and Ben Affleck as Batman