crime drama

binging PRIME SUSPECT and Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison

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Helen Mirren in PRIME SUSPECT

Prime Suspect, the perfect Labor Day weekend binge, pairs one of cinema’s greatest actresses, Helen Mirren, with one of the most compelling characters ever on episodic television, Detective Jane Tennison. At once a sensational crime show and a high brow character study, the seven seasons of Prime Suspect follow a female protagonist over fifteen years.

Prime Suspect is a set of nine separate stories over 25 hours. Jane Tennison’s career spans from Chief Detective Inspector to Superintendent to Chief Superintendent. The episodes were created between 1991 and 20O5, and Helen Mirren herself ages from 46 to 60 in the role.

The core of Prime Suspect is the character of Jane Tennison, forged by writer Lynda La Plante and Mirren. Jane is a driven woman, in a career that ranges from when women cops were unwelcome novelties to more politically correct times. In the entire span, Jane is, at best, barely tolerated.

Jane gives as well as she gets. She can force her superiors to promote her by using the same heavy-handed methods they use to suppress her.

Indeed, each Prime Suspect story has multiple threads of conflict. There is, of course, Jane against the criminal she is trying to catch. At the same time, Jane is being distracted and hampered by forces inside her own department. And Jane is in a constant battle to hold herself together amid overbearing stress.

Jane Tennison is a solitary figure, alone with her demons. She faces the daily challenges to her career survival and advancement with an ever-prickly demeanor.

Jane is a person of overwhelming ambition. In the very first season, it’s clear that she cannot advance by being pleasant and waiting her turn. She recognizes that sometimes she has to be unpleasant, and she will need to seize advancement at other’s expense; (in season 3, she receives a critical favor from a peer and then swipes his dream job).

Jane Tennison is also a fully sexual Woman of a Certain Age, but career rock stars like Jane can’t have it all. Her obsession with career leaves a trail of relationship carnage. At one point, Jane has fallen in love with the one man who gets her and adores her, but she has learned about herself and about life and…

And there’s always too much stress. Jane smokes too much and drinks too much. In Prime Suspect 3, her jaw is constantly pounding away on nicotine gum. In one later episode, she drops into her neighborhood market to buy four microwaveable frozen dinners and two fifths of whisky.

At first, Jane faces the most open and unapologetic misogyny, which evolves in later episodes into more veiled and insidious sexism. Being a flawed feminist hero is complicated. As the series evolves, Jane herself discriminates against a subordinate who is parenting. And she is betrayed by a female protege and, later, fights being forced out to pasture by a gender-integrated set of bosses.

Prime Suspect is always topical. Besides the ever-present sexism, the stories touch on race, abortion, postpartum depression, AIDS, sex work and pedophilia.

Most of the Prime Suspect plots are serial killer whodunits, and one story turns on whether she got it wrong in solving her breakthrough case. In one story, we know the culprit right away, but Jane is a race against the clock to prevent further victims.

In an astounding performance, Mirren grips us each time she fiercely deflects yet another indignity, as she waves her hand through her hair when she needs a reset from a setback and as her eyes reveal that she is connecting the dots. Her entire body coils in frustration and stiffens in insubordination. It’s a tour de force.

Between seasons of Prime Suspect, Helen Mirren was compiling an imposing body of work: The Madness of King George, Gosford Park and her Oscar-winning Elizabeth II in The Queen.

I believe that Mirren’s Jane ranks, with James Gandolfini’s run as Tony Soprano, as one of the greatest in episodic dramas. I’m guessing that Mirren was on screen for over twenty hours of Prime Suspect and that Gandolfini was on screen as Tony Sopranos for about 35 of The Sopranos‘ 86 hours. Of course, Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison is distinguished from most episodic protagonists by being female and by aging fifteen years.

Mirren is surrounded by two generations of the best British actors. For tomorrow, I’ve also written PRIME SUSPECT: the supporting performances.

This is one of the best and most entertaining episodic series ever on television. All seven series of Prime Suspect can be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime).

three faces of the MALTESE FALCON

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Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels in 1931’s THE MALTESE FALCON

When we think of The Maltese Falcon, the 1941 John Huston film justifiably comes to mind. After all, it’s arguably the first film noir and undeniably influential. It’s also got Humphrey Bogart as an indelible detective Sam Spade and an unsurpassed ensemble cast. But this is only one of three movie versions of Dashiell Hammett’s source novel.

The 1931 movie was a sex comedy, and the 1936 version was a screwball comedy. All three films are united by Hammett’s cynicism.

THE MALTESE FALCON (1931)

unclad Bebe Daniels in 1931’s THE MALTESE FALCON

The first cinematic The Maltese Falcon came out in 1931, only one year after the novel. It was directed by Roy Del Ruth with its screenplay adapted by Maude Fulton, Brown Holmes and Lucien Hubbard. Sam Spade was played by Ricardo Cortez, born Jacob Krantz to Austrian Jewish parents and recast by Hollywood into a Latin Lover.

Cortez’s Sam Spade is lecherous, cocksure, leering and pawing. Indeed, if this Pre-Code The Maltese Falcon is about anything, it’s about sex. It opens with a woman adjusting her hose before leaving Sam Spade’s office, evidence of a just-completed sexual encounter.

Bebe Daniels plays Miss Wonderly/Brigid O’Shaughnessy as sexually aggressive. She’s shown taking an obviously post-coital bath, and deals out lines like “who’s that dame wearing MY kimono?“.

At one point, a large banknote is missing and Spade takes Brigid into an adjoining room and strip searches her. This 1931 movie is the only Maltese Falcon that contains this sequence. What we see on camera is an apparently nude Brigid clutching her clothes behind the door.

As entertaining as this raunchy version is, much of the drama is drained drama from the final confrontation. Spade produces Chinese merchant Lee Fu Gow as an eyewitness to Archer’s murder, resulting in Brigid’s conviction. Then Spade shows up to jail to buy premium perks for Brigid while she is incarcerated. Off-screen, Wilmer kills Gutman and Cairo.

According to film noir expert Eddie Muller, this 1931 Effie (Spade’s secretary), played by Una Merkel, is the closest screen portrayal to the detective’s secretary in Hammett’s source novel.

The Hays Code prevented the re-release of The Maltese Falcon in 1936, which led to the 1936 remake. Because it’s so risque, the complete version of this 1931 film was not screened again in the United States until 1966.

SATAN MET A LADY (1936)

Bette Davis and Warren William in SATAN MET A LADY

That 1936 remake was directed by William Dieterle, with a screenplay by Brown Holmes. It’s more of a screwball comedy than a whodunit. And it’s an actor’s movie – with the stars riffing off their already established screen personae.

Like the title, all of the characters are renamed but recognizable. Warren William plays the shamus Sam Spade, Bette Davis is the Brigid fatale, ditzy Marie Wilson is the Effie, Alison Skipworth is a female take on the Gastman character and Arthur Treacher’s Travers fills the place of the Cairo character. The gunsel is played as an obvious homosexual by purring Maynard Holmes (an effective scene stealer despite being uncredited). And the MacGuffin they’re all chasing is The Horn of Roland, not the black bird.

Warren William was the King of Pre-Code, a leading man who delighted in playing shameless scoundrels. That’s what audiences were expecting, and that’s what they got in Satan Met a Lady. William’s Spade is flamboyant and always looking for a quick buck (and a quickie). Bette Davis matched up well with William, as she did earlier in the political satire The Dark Horse.

Alison Skipworth was already 72 when she made Satan Met a Lady, and her jovial but devious performance is at least as good as Sydney Greenstreet’s in the 1941 version.

Quips fly back and forth in a ping pong of witticisms. And you can’t take your eyes off Maynard Holmes and Marie Wilson whenever they’re on the screen.

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

Humphrey Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

John Huston directed and adapted the screenplay for the 1941 The Maltese Falcon. This is the most famous version because it is by far the best. It’s darker, and virtually every character is richer, and the performances by Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor are riveting.

Huston’s Maltese Falcon is often called the first film noir, and it’s certainly more influential than the other contenders. Huston and cinematographer Arthur Edeson (Casablanca) teamed up to create innovative camera shots and a a setting every much as shadowy as the characters. You can see The Maltese Falcon‘s look and feel in the entire genre of film noir.

Right away, audiences knew they were looking t something different. We see the shadow of the lettering “Spade and Archer” on the office floor. Spade’s phone is lit by outside streetlights when he gets the call about Archer’s demise. Many faces emerge from the shadows, dramatically lit. Spade leans over to kiss Brigid, and we see over his shoulder, out the window to Wilmer’s stakeout on the street below. Look for the shadows of the curtains blowing behind Spade in the final scene.

You can play a drinking game with the times that Brigid has bars across her, from the shadows of Venetian blinds, the stripes on cloths, and, finally, when the bars of the elevator are pulled across her face.

Bogart was a familiar face in crime movies, usually as the villain dispatched by the hero. But The Maltese Falcon put him on the A-List. Bogart’s Sam Spade was the streetwise, cynical guy looking out for himself, but who still adheres to a code, just like his upcoming iconic roles in Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep and Key Largo.

Humphrey Bogart trying to assess Mary Astor in THE MALTESE FALCON

Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a tour de force. Adorable, captivating and seemingly vulnerable, Astor’s Brigid is SO manipulative. Bogart’s Spade is so jaded that he expects the worst from everyone, but even he can let his guard down for Astor’s Brigid.

Astor was an uncommonly beautiful girl, and, beginning at age 15, she made 49 pictures in the Silent Movie Era. Her best role had been at age 29 in Dodsworth, filmed while she was being tormented by scandalous child custody litigation. Here, the 35-year-old Astor is seasoned enough to play a crafty woman who uses her sexuality without looking like that’s what she’s doing.

Superb performances abound, especially Sydney Greenstreet as the affable but sinister mastermind Gutman and Peter Lorre as the fey hustler Joel Cairo. As Wilmer, Elisha Cook, Jr., delivers the finest depiction of a weak punk, wannabe hard guy before John Cazale’s Fredo in The Godfather.

This was the first movie for the 61-year-old stage actor Greenstreet and the beginning of his on-screen pairing with Peter Lorre. Huston and Edeson film Gutman from below to emphasize his girth and menace. Upon receiving really bad news, the nervous Cairo melts down and Gutman clutches at his carotid artery, but then recovers and embarks in merry greed.

Dashiell Hammett’s world view – that no one can disappoint you as long as you expect them to act only in their craven self interest – pervades all three Maltese Falcons. But Bogart’s Sam Spade, as written by John Huston, elevates the 1941 version. Ever sympathetic, Bogart’s Spade is never cuddly; his partner is not yet in the ground when Spade has the sign painter remove the partner’s name from the office door. And, as would any man, Sam can have feelings for Brigid, but he won’t be her sap.

Elsiha Cook, Jr. finds out that Humphrey Bogart is on to him in the 1941 version of THE MALTESE FALCON

Streams of the Week: MYSTERY ROAD and GOLDSTONE

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Aaron Pederson in MYSTERY ROAD

Writer-director Ivan Sen’s Australian crime dramas Mystery Road and Goldstone both feature Sen’s wholly original protagonist Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson). Swan is an indigenous police investigator who must face racist locals and his own demons.  Pederson’s performances in both movies are very strong, bringing out the inner conflict within a guy who needed to leave his hometown and his marriage but is tormented by the consequences of those decisions.

In the contemporary murder mystery Mystery Road, Detective Swan returns to his small town in the Australian outback to encounter racist co-workers, a drunk and shiftless ex-wife and a resentful teenage daughter.  The daughter is a concern because her gal pals are starting to turn up murdered one by one.  Mystery Road is a solid but unexceptional police procedural except for two things: the movie’s climactic gun battle between guys using hunting rifles through telescopic sights – a real show stopper .

Hugo Weaving chews up some scenery with a supporting role as a cop with ambiguous motivation.  Weaving, with his supporting roles in The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, etc., may be the world’s most financially successful character actor.

Aaron Pederson and Jacki Weaver in GOLDSTONE


In Goldstone, Swan is still reeling from a family tragedy when he finds a dark personal tie to the latest crime scene. Alcohol doesn’t help. A missing persons case brings Swan to a remote mining outpost. There’s a young local cop of ambiguous motivation – will he obstruct Swan, compete with him or become an ally? The local cop is working a human trafficking case, and the two cops pursue their investigations on dueling separate tracks until they inevitably converge.

Once again, the great Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook) plays a peppy, ever-pleasant cutthroat as only she can.

The dialogue and most of the plot in Goldstone are pretty paint-by-the-numbers, but just as with Mystery Road, the character of Jay Swan and the performance by Aaron Pederson, along with the Outback setting, make Goldstone very watchable.

Both Mystery Road and Goldstone played at Cinequest. Mystery Road is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. Goldstone can be streamed on Netflix, Amazon , iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE THIRD MURDER: legal procedural turns philosophical

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Masaharu Fukuyama and Kôji Yakusho in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).

The Third Murder opens with a killing, and the audience gets a clear full-face view of the killer.  Then the mystery begins – not about who done it, but about why and who will be held accountable.

A high-powered defense lawyer (Masaharu Fukuyama) has been called in to take over a challenging case; it’s potentially a death penalty case, and the defendant (Kôji Yakusho) has confessed. Moreover, the defendant has previously served thirty years for an earlier murder, he’s an oddball and he keeps switching his story.

Nevertheless, the lawyer thinks he can avoid the death penalty with a technicality about the motivation for the crime. He gets some good news from forensic evidence and then discovers one startling secret about the victims’ family – and then another one even more shocking – one that might even exculpate his client.

The Third Murder is a slow burn, as the grind of legal homework is punctuated by reveal after reveal. Eventually, there’s a shocker at the trial, and this legal procedural eventually gives way to philosophical questions. Finally, there’s an edge-of-the-seat epilogue – a final lawyer-client face-to-face where the shell-shocked lawyer tries to confirm what really happened and why.

Masaharu Fukuyama in Hirokazu Koreeda’s THE THIRD MURDER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM).

Yakusho (Tampopo, Shall We Dance?, Babel, 13 Assassins) is quite excellent as the defendant, a man who seems to be an unreliable mental case, but who might have a sense of justice that trumps everyone else’s.

The Third Murder is the work of director Hirokazu Koreeda, who made the 1995 art house hit Maborosi and one of the best movies of 2008, Still Walking.  Koreeda’s Shoplifters just won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and will be released in the US by Magnolia Pictures on November 23.  I saw The Third Murder at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).

 

Cinequest: GOLDSTONE

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Aaron Pederson and Jacki Weaver in GOLDSTONE
Aaron Pederson and Jacki Weaver in GOLDSTONE

The Australian crime drama Goldstone is writer-director Ivan Sen’s sequel of sorts to the 2014 Cinequest film Mystery Road. Both films feature Sen’s wholly original protagonist Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson), an indigenous police investigator who must face racist locals and his own demons.  Pederson’s performances in both movies are very strong, bringing out the inner conflict within a guy who needed to leave his hometown and his marriage but is tormented by the consequences of those decisions. In Goldstone, Swan is still reeling from a family tragedy when he finds a dark personal tie to the latest crime scene. Alcohol doesn’t help.

In Goldstone, a missing persons case brings Detective Jay Swan to a remote mining outpost. There’s a young local cop of ambiguous motivation – will he obstruct Swan, compete with him or become an ally? The local cop is working a human trafficking case, and the two cops pursue their investigations on dueling separate tracks until they inevitably converge.

Once again, the great Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook) plays a peppy, ever-pleasant cutthroat as only she can.

The dialogue and most of the plot in Goldstone are pretty paint-by-the-numbers, but just as with Mystery Road, the character of Jay Swan and the performance by Aaron Pederson, along with the Outback setting, make Goldstone very watchable.

(Mystery Road is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and can be streamed from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.)

VIOLENT SATURDAY: desert noir in De Luxe color

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VIOLENT SATURDAY
VIOLENT SATURDAY

Richard Fleischer is one of my favorite directors, but I was unfamiliar with his Violent Saturday (1955) until the Czar of Noir Eddie Muller programmed it for the 2017 Noir City film festival.  Unusual for 1950s noir, it’s filmed in glorious CinemaScope and De Luxe color on location in the bright desert of Bisbee, Warren and Lowell, Arizona.

Three hoods spend a few days casing a bank in a remote mining town.  The movie doesn’t center as much on the actual heist as on the characters of the robbers and the townspeople.  The smug leader of the gang is Stephen McNally (Dutch Henry Brown in Winchester ’73).  The nasty, edgy guy who hates kids and uses an inhaler is played by Lee Marvin with inhaler.  J. Carroll Naish plays the no-nonsense crime veteran in the crew.

The townspeople are:

  • The sensitive mine manager (Victor Mature);
  • The self loathing alcoholic mining heir (Richard Egan), besotted with his straying wife (Margaret Hayes);
  • The timid bank manager and nighttime peeper (Tommy Noonan);
  • The town hottie (Virginia Leith);
  • The Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine in full Amish beard!); and
  • The librarian with a practical approach to her money troubles (veteran Sylvia Sidney).

Unfortunately, the dialogue in Violent Saturday is pretty lame and often downright soapy: “I’ve been cheap and rotten but I’ve always loved you” and “please leave me alone for a while – I don’t want you to see me cry”.  And the ending ties everything up a little too neatly – including for the peeping tom.

But the cast did the best they could with the characters, especially McNally.  Virginia Leith is a silky and sensuous presence; her career died just a year after Violent Saturday when she wasn’t renewed by Fox (per IMDb); she’s now best known for playing the disembodied Jan in the Pan in the cult fave The Brain that Wouldn’t Die.

Violent Saturday was Richard Fleischer’s fourth film after his noir masterpiece, The Narrow Margin.  Indeed, the best thing about Violent Saturday is Fleischer’s expert direction. You can tell that this isn’t by-the-numbers directing when we see the shots of the robbers casing the bank, the dancing in the bar, when the hoods approach Amish with guns drawn and, especially, when the peeper edges past the hottie in the drug store.

[Here’s one thing that confused me about the title: the robbery takes place during regular business hours, and in the 1950s, banks were not open on Saturdays.  Maybe the robbery was on Friday and the final shootout is the next day?  Help me here somebody.]

Violent Saturday is available to stream on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE SICILIAN CLAN: Gabin, Delon and Ventura

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Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN
Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN

The 1969 French neo-noir The Sicilian Clan is an exemplar of noir’s Perfect Crime sub-genre – they’re going to get away with the elaborately planned big heist EXCEPT FOR ONE THING.  In this case, the one thing is Sicilian macho pride.

There’s an inventive jail break, an exciting boudoir escape and an impossibly brilliant heist plan. There’s also a great scene with a kid and his toy gun.  The suspense tightens even more when a minor character’s wife unexpectedly shows up and threatens to derail the heist again and again.

Most of all, director Henri Verneuil knew that he had three unbeatable cards to play, and he got the most from them:

  • Alain Delon –  Impossibly handsome and dashing, no one ever removed their sunglasses with more of a flourish than Delon.  Delon was in his early thirties, and at the peak of his string of crime movie vehicles, after Anybody Can Win and Le Samourai and before Le Cercle Rouge and The Gypsy.
  • Lino Ventura –  One of the most watchable French stars, Ventura’s bloodhound face had been reshaped by his earlier career as a professional wrestler.   Here, he’s the guy you’re drawn to whenever he’s on-screen.
  • Jean Gabin – Probably the greatest male French movie star ever, Gabin had dominated prewar French cinema with Pepe LeMoko, La Grande Illusion, Port of Shadows and Le Bete Humaine.  After the war, he aged into noir (Touchez Pas aux Grisbi) and, in the 1960s, into neo-noir.  Gabin oozed a seasoned cool (like Bogart) and imparted a stately gravitas to his noir and neo-noir characters.

In The Sicilian Clan, Delon plays the reckless hood in over his head.  Gabin plays the crime boss who is exploiting him.  And Ventura plays the cagey detective after them both.

Here’s a nice touch – the highly professional gang brings in an outsider who is a hopeless drunk.  What is his specialty and why do they need him?  When we find out during the final heist, it’s a stunner that no one could see coming.

The whistling and boings in the offbeat score tell us that it’s the work of Ennio Morricone in his Spaghetti Western period; I’m a Morricone fan, but this is not one of his best.

The Sicilian Clan is not a classic.  The dialogue is grossly clichéd.  There is not a single ordinary looking woman in the film.  An obligatory tryst is tiresomely predictable and made worse by the score’s wacky, clanging music.

But the plot, while contrived, is well-contrived.  And the combination of Delon, Ventura and Gabin will make almost anything work.  You can watch The Sicilian Clan at the Castro Theatre during Noir City 2017, or stream it from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

[Note: In our post 9/11 world, audiences will feel uneasy when a hijacked airplane flies low over the Manhattan skyscrapers.]

Lino Ventura and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN
Lino Ventura and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN

DVD/Stream of the Week: HELL OR HIGH WATER – you won’t see a better movie in 2016

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Chris Pine in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Chris Pine in HELL OR HIGH WATER

For the second straight week, my DVD/Stream recommendation is the superb Hell or High Water.

Toby: “You’re talkin’ like you don’t think we’re going to get away with it.”
Tanner: “I never met anyone who got away with anything.”

The character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water is remarkably atmospheric and gripping, and I have it at the very top of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. As it begins, we think we’re watching a very well-made film about white trash losers on a crime spree, but eventually, as we understand how original the characters are and how intricate the plot is, we understand that we’re watching a triumph of the perfect crime genre – and with an embedded political point of view. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, an actor who wrote last year’s Sicario, has proven that he is an artist of uncommon depth.

Director David Mackenzie imbues Hell or High Water with an astonishing sense of time (the present) and place (rural West Texas). The story is set in the dusty flatlands between Lubbock and Wichita Falls (shot just over the border in eastern New Mexico). Mackenzie employs Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography and the music, some composed by Nick Cave, to evoke an environment that is rich in horizons but, except in the bursts of occasional oil booms, dirt poor in every way. He begins Hell or High Water with a 360 degree shot of a bank branch parking lot with a teller sneaking the last cigarette before her shift; the starkness and anonymity of the dying downtown immerses us right where Mackenzie wants us.

It’s a place where people know the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – and it’s important. It’s also a place where many civilians are gun-totin’, which adds a whole new element to the average bank robbery.

Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers. Toby is the more complex – both poorly educated and wise. While Toby takes personal responsibility for the bad choices of his youth that have ruined a marriage and left him unable to contribute to the future of his two sons, he appreciates that generational poverty and the economic system have stacked the odds against him. Toby cared for his dying mother and is now committed to making things right for his sons and ex-wife; he is highly moral but he’s not about to follow rules that he sees as unjust. He looks like another unemployed oilfield roughneck, but he’s surprisingly cagey and strategic.

Tanner is the classic lowlife psychopath, whose impulses have always led him into trouble with the law. Asked “How have you stayed out of jail for a year?”, Tanner replies, “It’s been difficult.” He’s also a little smarter and lot more charming than he looks, but it’s clear that he is destined for a bad end.

Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), an aged Texas ranger who is three weeks from retirement, is on the brothers’ trail. Marcus is an astute and unsentimental student of human behavior. Marcus relishes a good whodunit, and the wheels in his mind are always turning. His partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) offers that, for a happy retirement “you’ll need someone to outsmart”. Indeed, it’s from Marcus, not the brothers themselves, that we learn that the bank robbers are likely raising money for some cause, against some deadline

In Hell or High Water, the banks are the real robbers. Marcus spots a bank manager with “Now this looks like a man who could foreclose on a house”. In the world of Bonnie and Clyde, victims of the Depression lost farms to foreclosure, but many banks failed, too; that movie’s anti-heroes were misfits like Tanner. In the world of Hell or High Water, the game is fixed so that the banks can’t fail, and so banking is just legalized criminality.

Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER

Hell or High Water is exceptionally well-acted. This is the best work so far by Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek). Ben Foster, unsurprisingly, nails the Born To Lose character of Tanner. Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight movies) is stellar as Marcus’ reflective and long-suffering partner Alberto. Jeff Bridges has matured into a master actor who delivers absolute perfection and makes it look effortless.

And the high quality performances just keep coming throughout Hell or High Water. The film opens with nice turns by Dale Dickey (unforgettable in Winter’s Bone) and veteran Buck Taylor. Marin Ireland is excellent as Toby’s ex-wife, and Margaret Bowman sparks a diner scene as the world’s most authoritarian waitress. Katy Mixon is Oscar-worthy in a role as a waitress who may long for companionship, but really, really needs to keep her tip; I just hope enough people see this movie and experience Mixon’s eyes narrowing and gleaming with resolve.

While Jeff Bridges is reason enough to see Hell or High Water, all of its elements add up to a masterpiece. Not that Chris Pine needs a star-making breakthrough performance, but Hell or High Water certainly proves that he can carry a better movie than Hollywood franchises allow. I’m going to see Hell or High Water again; then I’m going to line up to see Taylor Sheridan’s next film, whatever and whenever that will be.

Hell or High Water is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

DVD/Stream of the Week: HELL OR HIGH WATER – you won’t see a better movie in 2016

by

Chris Pine and Ben Foster in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Chris Pine and Ben Foster in HELL OR HIGH WATER

Toby: “You’re talkin’ like you don’t think we’re going to get away with it.”
Tanner: “I never met anyone who got away with anything.”

The character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water is remarkably atmospheric and gripping, and I have it at the very top of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. As it begins, we think we’re watching a very well-made film about white trash losers on a crime spree, but eventually, as we understand how original the characters are and how intricate the plot is, we understand that we’re watching a triumph of the perfect crime genre – and with an embedded political point of view. Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, an actor who wrote last year’s Sicario, has proven that he is an artist of uncommon depth.

Director David Mackenzie imbues Hell or High Water with an astonishing sense of time (the present) and place (rural West Texas). The story is set in the dusty flatlands between Lubbock and Wichita Falls (shot just over the border in eastern New Mexico). Mackenzie employs Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography and the music, some composed by Nick Cave, to evoke an environment that is rich in horizons but, except in the bursts of occasional oil booms, dirt poor in every way. He begins Hell or High Water with a 360 degree shot of a bank branch parking lot with a teller sneaking the last cigarette before her shift; the starkness and anonymity of the dying downtown immerses us right where Mackenzie wants us.

It’s a place where people know the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – and it’s important. It’s also a place where many civilians are gun-totin’, which adds a whole new element to the average bank robbery.

Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers. Toby is the more complex – both poorly educated and wise. While Toby takes personal responsibility for the bad choices of his youth that have ruined a marriage and left him unable to contribute to the future of his two sons, he appreciates that generational poverty and the economic system have stacked the odds against him. Toby cared for his dying mother and is now committed to making things right for his sons and ex-wife; he is highly moral but he’s not about to follow rules that he sees as unjust. He looks like another unemployed oilfield roughneck, but he’s surprisingly cagey and strategic.

Tanner is the classic lowlife psychopath, whose impulses have always led him into trouble with the law. Asked “How have you stayed out of jail for a year?”, Tanner replies, “It’s been difficult.” He’s also a little smarter and lot more charming than he looks, but it’s clear that he is destined for a bad end.

Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), an aged Texas ranger who is three weeks from retirement, is on the brothers’ trail. Marcus is an astute and unsentimental student of human behavior. Marcus relishes a good whodunit, and the wheels in his mind are always turning. His partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) offers that, for a happy retirement “you’ll need someone to outsmart”. Indeed, it’s from Marcus, not the brothers themselves, that we learn that the bank robbers are likely raising money for some cause, against some deadline

In Hell or High Water, the banks are the real robbers. Marcus spots a bank manager with “Now this looks like a man who could foreclose on a house”. In the world of Bonnie and Clyde, victims of the Depression lost farms to foreclosure, but many banks failed, too; that movie’s anti-heroes were misfits like Tanner. In the world of Hell or High Water, the game is fixed so that the banks can’t fail, and so banking is just legalized criminality.

Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER

Hell or High Water is exceptionally well-acted. This is the best work so far by Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek). Ben Foster, unsurprisingly, nails the Born To Lose character of Tanner. Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight movies) is stellar as Marcus’ reflective and long-suffering partner Alberto. Jeff Bridges has matured into a master actor who delivers absolute perfection and makes it look effortless.

And the high quality performances just keep coming throughout Hell or High Water. The film opens with nice turns by Dale Dickey (unforgettable in Winter’s Bone) and veteran Buck Taylor. Marin Ireland is excellent as Toby’s ex-wife, and Margaret Bowman sparks a diner scene as the world’s most authoritarian waitress. Katy Mixon is Oscar-worthy in a role as a waitress who may long for companionship, but really, really needs to keep her tip; I just hope enough people see this movie and experience Mixon’s eyes narrowing and gleaming with resolve.

While Jeff Bridges is reason enough to see Hell or High Water, all of its elements add up to a masterpiece. Not that Chris Pine needs a star-making breakthrough performance, but Hell or High Water certainly proves that he can carry a better movie than Hollywood franchises allow. I’m going to see Hell or High Water again; then I’m going to line up to see Taylor Sheridan’s next film, whatever and whenever that will be.

Hell or High Water is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

HELL OR HIGH WATER: best movie of the year so far

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Chris Pine and Ben Foster in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Chris Pine and Ben Foster in HELL OR HIGH WATER

Toby: “You’re talkin’ like you don’t think we’re going to get away with it.”
Tanner: “I never met anyone who got away with anything.”

The character-driven crime drama Hell or High Water is remarkably atmospheric and gripping, and I’ll be putting it at the very top of my Best Movies of 2016 – So Far.  As it begins, we think we’re watching a very well-made film about white trash losers on a crime spree, but eventually, as we understand how original the characters are and how intricate the plot is, we understand that we’re watching a triumph of the perfect crime genre – and with an embedded political point of view.  Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, an actor who wrote last year’s Sicario, has proven that he is an artist of uncommon depth.

Director David Mackenzie imbues Hell or High Water with an astonishing sense of time (the present) and place (rural West Texas).  The story is set in the dusty flatlands between Lubbock and Wichita Falls (shot just over the border in eastern New Mexico).    Mackenzie employs Giles Nuttgens’ cinematography and the music, some composed by Nick Cave, to evoke an environment that is rich in horizons but, except in the bursts of occasional oil booms, dirt poor in every way.  He begins Hell or High Water with a 360 degree shot of a bank branch parking lot with a teller sneaking the last cigarette before her shift; the starkness and anonymity of the dying downtown immerses us right where Mackenzie wants us.

It’s a place where people know the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – and it’s important.  It’s also a place where many civilians are gun-totin’, which adds a whole new element to the average bank robbery.

Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers.  Toby is the more complex – both poorly educated and wise.   While Toby takes personal responsibility for the bad choices of his youth that have ruined a marriage and left him unable to contribute to the future of his two sons, he appreciates that generational poverty and the economic system have stacked the odds against him.  Toby cared for his dying mother and is now committed to making things right for his sons and ex-wife; he is highly moral but he’s not about to follow rules that he sees as unjust.  He looks like another unemployed oilfield roughneck, but he’s surprisingly cagey and strategic.

Tanner is the classic lowlife psychopath, whose impulses have always led him into trouble with the law.  Asked “How have you stayed out of jail for a year?”, Tanner replies,  “It’s been difficult.”  He’s also a little smarter and lot more charming than he looks, but it’s clear that he is destined for a bad end.

Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), an aged Texas ranger who is three weeks from retirement, is on the brothers’ trail.  Marcus is an astute and unsentimental student of human behavior.  Marcus relishes a good whodunit, and the wheels in his mind are always turning. His partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) offers that, for a happy retirement “you’ll need someone to outsmart”.  Indeed, it’s from Marcus, not the brothers themselves, that we learn that the bank robbers are likely raising money for some cause, against some deadline

In Hell or High Water, the banks are the real robbers.  Marcus spots a bank manager with “Now this looks like a man who could foreclose on a house”. In the world of Bonnie and Clyde, victims of the Depression lost farms to foreclosure, but many banks failed, too; that movie’s anti-heroes were misfits like Tanner. In the world of Hell or High Water, the game is fixed so that the banks can’t fail, and so banking is just legalized criminality.

Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in HELL OR HIGH WATER

Hell or High Water is exceptionally well-acted. This is the best work so far by Chris Pine (Kirk in Star Trek). Ben Foster, unsurprisingly, nails the Born To Lose character of Tanner. Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight movies) is stellar as Marcus’ reflective and long-suffering partner Alberto. Jeff Bridges has matured into a master actor who delivers absolute perfection and makes it look effortless.

And the high quality performances just keep coming throughout Hell or High Water. The film opens with nice turns by Dale Dickey (unforgettable in Winter’s Bone) and veteran Buck Taylor. Marin Ireland is excellent as Toby’s ex-wife, and Margaret Bowman sparks a diner scene as the world’s most authoritarian waitress. Katy Mixon is Oscar-worthy in a role as a waitress who may long for companionship, but really, really needs to keep her tip; I just hope enough people see this movie and experience Mixon’s eyes narrowing and gleaming with resolve.

While Jeff Bridges is reason enough to see Hell or High Water, all of its elements add up to a masterpiece.  Not that Chris Pine needs a star-making breakthrough performance, but Hell or High Water certainly proves that he can carry a better movie than Hollywood franchises allow.  I’m going to see Hell or High Water again; then I’m going to line up to see Taylor Sheridan’s next film, whatever and whenever that will be.