If the remarkably bleak summer tentpole season has you down, look no further than the independent side to offer up the season’s best films. One the highlights, David Mackenzie‘s modern western Hell or High Water, arrived last week, which follows two ex-con brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster), who start robbing banks in a desperate attempt to save their family farm, with Jeff Bridges‘ character on their tail.
One of the finest elements, aside from a script by Sicario’s Taylor Sheridan, is the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, re-teaming after The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition, The Road, and Far from Men. Also featuring tracks by Chris Stapleton, Townes Van Zandt, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Waylon Jennings, Colter Wall, and more, it’s available to stream in full today.
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.”
Listen to the full score below, along with a U.K. trailer and a pair of international posters.
Hell or High Water is now in limited release and expands wide on Friday.