The second trailer has dropped for David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water, the director’s follow-up to the excellent Starred Up. The script, penned by Sicario’s Taylor Sheridan, centers on two ex-con brothers who start robbing banks in a desperate attempt to save their family farm. The new trailer covers the narrative trappings and shows off a bit of the hyperrealism in gun fights that Mackenzie previously delivered with a prison-yard scrap. There’s also the addition of quotes from the enthusiastic Cannes response. Oh, and also Ben Foster has a killer mustache.
We said in our review, “David McKenzie’s Hell or High Water is a gritty, darkly humorous, and fiendishly violent neo-western. Or, in other words, the type of film you might expect from a non-American director working in the United States. It borrows heavily from the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy, but it does so very well, thanks largely to a terrific script from Taylor Sheridan, the red-hot actor-turned-screenwriter who broke onto the scene last year with Sicario. It might usher in a new chapter of the Cambridge-born director’s career having come back strong in 2013 directing an inspired Jack O’Connell in Starred Up. Indeed, this relocation to the States should go some way to explaining an enjoyably plastic impression of West Texas, where T-bone steaks are served only medium rare and people say things like, “Sideways don’t wanna meet me. Unless it wants to find itself at the short end of a long street.” Or something like that.”
See the trailer below, along with a poster.
A story about the collision of the Old and New West, two brothers—Toby (Chris Pine), a straight-living, divorced father trying to make a better life for his son; and Tanner (Ben Foster), a short-tempered ex-con with a loose trigger finger—come together to rob branch after branch of the bank that is foreclosing on their family land. The hold-ups are part of a last-ditch scheme to take back a future that powerful forces beyond their control have stolen from under their feet. Vengeance seems to be theirs until they find themselves in the crosshairs of a relentless, foul-mouthed Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) looking for one last triumph on the eve of his retirement. As the brothers plot a final bank heist to complete their plan, a showdown looms at the crossroads where the last honest law man and a pair of brothers with nothing to live for except family collide.
Hell or High Water opens August 12th.