David Mackenzie
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Connections, in both directions
Picking up where “Braveheart” left off, “ Outlaw King ” tells the story of Robert the Bruce, the Scottish leader who invoked the memory of fallen rebel William Wallace, “Remember the Alamo!” style, on his way to reclaiming Scotland’s independence.
Many know the tale of William Wallace, the Scottish knight who was a prominent leader in the First War of Scottish Independence, as portrayed by Mel Gibson in a wee film called Braveheart.
It's impossible to watch Outlaw King without comparison to the Oscar winning Braveheart, Mel Gibson's biography of William Wallace.
Forgoing blue face paint and 3+ hour running times, it’s certainly no Braveheart 2. You can decide for yourself if that’s a positive or a negative.
David MacKenzie wants to give you blood, battles, brooding and rousing patriotism with the waters muddied just enough to stop things from going full Braveheart.
If you’ve ever watched Braveheart and thought, “What happened after all that?”, have I got a film for you!
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Hell or High Water (2016)
Characters Themes Visuals
They are stealing too little to generate FBI interest but more than enough to catch the eye of about-to-retire Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges borrowing a few notes from Tommy Lee Jones in "No Country for Old Men").
Jeff Bridges, borrowing Tommy Lee Jones’ character from “No Country for Old Men,” plays a retirement-bound Texas Ranger who finds it amusing to pursue one last caper: Two outlaws are robbing a series of banks in a very strange way.
Like a less cynical, less open-ended 'No Country For Old Men'…
More often than not, however, it tries so hard to emulate the likes of “ No Country for Old Men ” at times that you can feel it practically straining from the effort without quite pulling it off.
It’s a modern-day Western along the lines of “No Country for Old Men” with a mixture of dry humor, unsettling violence and an examination of inner clockwork of damaged men in a damaged world.
Not since "No Country for Old Men" has a modern Western been so thematically rich.
He works in references to other films, Westerns and neo-Westerns, that deal with similar issues — “Badlands,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” the Coens’ “True Grit” (which also featured Bridges), any number of old Westerns about Jesse and Frank James , and maybe even “No Country for Old Men.”
You might have to go back to 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde to find a film about bank robbers that feels as of its time as David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water.
Mackenzie’s film quietly updates the themes and sensibility of Bonnie and Clyde.
From Zorro to Scarface to Batman to Bonnie and Clyde, the devilish allure of seeking justice and fulfillment outside of convention and societal rubrics has fascinated audiences since the early days of film, and the idea of the outlaw remains as ripe for rumination and trigger-happy entertainment as ever.
It's a familiar story with a familiar populist undercurrent, reminiscent of '60s and '70s flicks such as Bonnie and Clyde and Dog Day Afternoon.
It's much more even than a very fine entry in the long line of outlaw road movies, going back through Bonnie and Clyde and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot .
The last scenes are especially satisfying, both in movie terms — with the cliff-side echoes of Bogart in “High Sierra” (1941) and Kirk Douglas in “Lonely Are the Brave” (1962) — and in the final moral calculus of banker, lawman, farmer, thief.
Hamilton gets two very different final confrontations with the brothers, one a violent, action-filled shootout that recalls the end of Kirk Douglas classic Lonely Are the Brave, the other a tense conversation filled with resentful yet respectful subtext.
He works in references to other films, Westerns and neo-Westerns, that deal with similar issues — “Badlands,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” the Coens’ “True Grit” (which also featured Bridges), any number of old Westerns about Jesse and Frank James , and maybe even “No Country for Old Men.”
Channeling the open-plains lyricism of Terrence Malick’s 1973 masterpiece Badlands and its modern spiritual offspring, Andrew Dominik’s 2007 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (not to mention David Lowery’s even more recent Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water concerns two brothers on a bank-robbing spree through West Texas, and the just-shy-of-retirement ranger intent on catching them.
“Two-Lane Blacktop,” “Vanishing Point,” “Badlands.”
The caging recalls that of Iago, at the end of Orson Welles’s “ Othello ” (1955), and, as “Outlaw King” arrives at its weltering climax, a frenzy of mudbound slaughter, the echo is of Welles’s “ Chimes at Midnight ”(1967).
Hell or High Water isn’t a flashy movie, but it has an undeniably resonant sense of small-scale justice, not to mention an authentic sense of place that will remind you of other Texas-set masterpieces like John Sayles’ Lone Star and the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men.
Playing the lawman, Bridges, looking like Kris Kristofferson from “Lone Star,” shines as a plainspoken man grieving the end of his career.
Zabriskie Point (1970)
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
influenced Hell or High Water (2016)
Visuals
And it doesn’t hurt that the cinematography of longtime collaborator Giles Nuttgens is lustrous and dusky in equal measure, capturing dying and dead towns and vast landscape with the acuity of Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point” or as a less languorous, less brightly-colored parallel to Wim Wenders and Robby Müller’s “Paris, Texas.”
The last scenes are especially satisfying, both in movie terms — with the cliff-side echoes of Bogart in “High Sierra” (1941) and Kirk Douglas in “Lonely Are the Brave” (1962) — and in the final moral calculus of banker, lawman, farmer, thief.
His new film utilizes Western imagery (one shot of Bridges deliberately evokes Henry Fonda’s famous porch lean from My Darling Clementine ) but it still feels fresh and contemporary.
Completely different tonally but also coming to Sundance with a ton of star power is Taylor Sheridan ’s “Wind River,” the third part of a thematic trilogy by the writer of “ Sicario ” and “ Hell or High Water ,” who also makes his directorial debut here.
The directorial debut of Sicario and Hell or High Water writer Taylor Sheridan, the film focuses on Cory Lambert ( Jeremy Renner ), a Wyoming Fish and Wildlife employee who kills coyotes and mountain lions along a remote mountain range for a living.
It’s rare for someone’s directorial debut to be “highly anticipated,” but Taylor Sheridan’s police/western hybrid “Wind River” definitely qualifies, given that over the past two years, his scripts for “Sicario” and “Hell Or High Water” have been made into excellent, high-class action films.
It’s a long while before the implication of this throwaway line becomes clear, although anyone who’s seen Taylor Sheridan’s tersely didactic “Hell or High Water” should already know that the emerging scribe — here directing one of his own scripts for the first time — doesn’t really do throwaway lines.
It’s the third film written and the first one directed by Taylor Sheridan, who penned Sicario and Hell Or High Water .
'Hell or High Water' scribe Taylor Sheridan makes his debut behind the camera with this Wyoming-set mystery starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.
Going in Style is a mix of the friendship chemistry in Ocean's Eleven and the morality behind the crime lesson in Hell or High Water (without the excessive violence).
In a more serious vein, the recent Oscar-nominated Hell Or High Water dealt with the effect of the banks taking over the little guy, and now this film seems equally well-timed to make an impact — albeit one that uses broad comedy in spots to drive its points home.
Continually patronized, underestimated or plainly ignored, Joe, Willie and Albert resemble the heroes of last year’s similarly themed “Hell or High Water” as they seek retribution for their financial woes and social insignificance.
Despite invoking today’s capitalist bogeymen of callous corporations and exploitative banks, Going in Style shrinks from class conflict of the sort that has animated heist films including David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water , Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share and even Brett Ratner’s Tower Heist .
Have them decide to rob their own bank for revenge and ride into the sunset for a senior citizen Hell or High Water.
Interestingly enough, it has just as much in common with last year's superlative "Hell or High Water."
But "Spread," wherein Kutcher has the role of his young life as the pleasure-giving toy of well-off women in the Hollywood Hills, comes closer to the sudsy sexuality of Beatty's "Shampoo" than any movie in, well, 34 years.
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Directed by John Ford
influenced Hell or High Water (2016)
Themes Visuals
Courtesy of Pine and Foster’s superbly lived-in performances, Toby and Tanner’s fury at their unjust economic mistreatment is visible in their determined, sorrowful eyes, and doesn’t require the film to belabor its The Grapes of Wrath-ish point through overt statements of purpose.
But there are no — thank God — visual allusions to John Ford’s film of The Grapes of Wrath, which turned the Joad family into icons of working-class integrity under duress.
It looks like a million dollars (or fifty), with Netflix clearly not having skimped on the budget, but Mackenzie also finds a visual approach that’s distinct from the post-“Gladiator” glut of historical epics of the last twenty years, with the Battle Of The Bastards from “Game of Thrones” a more obvious reference point to the film’s (numerous) war sequences.
The portrayal of his character should bring reminders of Commodus in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, especially during the sword sequence.
It’s quite old-fashioned and classical, but in a pleasing way, reminiscent of “Gunga Din” and particularly Kurosawa in its widescreen images and reveling in mud and rain.
The Executioner's Song (1982)
Directed by Lawrence Schiller
influenced Hell or High Water (2016)
Themes
“Hell or High Water” has an understanding of what drives ordinary people to commit crime that links it to the lyrical hunger and despair of Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song.”
And the idea of sins passed down through time, of sons making amends for fathers—at one point Toby describes poverty as “like a disease that passes from generation to generation”—recalls Steve Kloves’s Flesh and Bone, which helped introduce the cinematic world to a 20-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow.
“Caught Stealing” is also the third movie this month (after David Mackenzie’s “Relay” and Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest”)…
Yes, there are a few sluggish sequences prior to the big action, with twists, finale, but it delivers all the thrills, though not as deftly as the recent RELAY (more stunts and explosives with this new one).
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
Directed by Sidney Lumet
influenced Hell or High Water (2016)
Characters
At times, they could be a cracker-barrel version of the love-hate siblings portrayed by Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Sidney Lumet’s “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” “Hell or High Water” channels the uncut adrenaline of crime, but it’s also a moral drama that takes the measure of each destabilizing action it shows us.