Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

alexandruvelciu I simply cannot understand how this movie got nominated for Best Picture Oscar !!! I got bored in the first 20 minutes like never before !!!! The fact that its screenplay got also nominated for Oscar simply gives me ghoosebumps ! This only confirms me that academy awards (doesn't worth capitalising anymore) it's only politically and financially infuenced ! SPOILER ALERT !!!Can someone explain me how the little brother didn't end up arrested in the end of the movie ?? With dozens of witnesses, and even him identified by policemen after splitting cars ?! Simply unreal !!! I could rewrite this movie screenplay while going to toilet in a single morning and improve it !And what really scares me the most are other s ratings and its rating on IMDB. But I guess this is what 21st century is all about: LYING, LYING and keep LYING all the time, on TV, in media, in movies, on blogs.... LIE as much as you can :)

NormanCroucher David Mackenzie's neo-western is a eulogy on the death of the American west and the last of the cowboys. There is a wistful mood and a mournful tone, with a sense of loss at the heart of the piece, and in many ways the film is all about loss - the loss of family, the loss of time, the loss of money, the loss of dignity. It's a remarkably understated crime thriller that uses the architecture of the old cat-and-mouse chase formula to sketch a surprisingly realistic picture of criminality and desperation.A lot of this film's success can be credited to both Taylor Sheridan's lean but muscular screenplay and the wonderful cast of character actors performing his matter-of-fact dialogue. Chris Pine escapes the bland movie star folly of his career thus far and completely disappears under the skin of a wounded farmboy-turned- man-of-the-house, providing the pathos and heart to the story, while on screen brother Ben Foster's fraught energy provides the conflict and volatility. And then there is the ever dependable Jeff Bridges who mumbles and grumbles his way through a performance that feels completely authentic and effortless as he doggedly pursues the brothers while looking every inch the aged cowboy. It's a shame then that his character wasn't given more meat to his bones because, regardless of Bridges' low-key brilliance, the cop-in-pursuit subplot is where the movie is fundamentally lacking. At no point do our sympathies diverge away from the outlaw brothers to the Sheriff, unlike in Michael Mann's 'Heat' where both cop and robber were portrayed in equally sympathetic and interesting ways. Therefore, there is very little conflict within us come the inevitable showdown(s) between them and that robs us of experiencing the full breath of dramatic tension and emotional impact in the third act.There is still much to like in this film, even with a somewhat insubstantial subplot. To think that a simple story about cops and robbers can still work so well in these post-modern audience aware times is actually a testament to its level of craft and execution. I thought everything about the sub-genre had been pretty much exhausted, but 'Hell or High Water' proves, much like Bridges' grizzled performance, that there is life left in this old dog yet.

LilyDaleLady I'm torn on this film; it has many good points including first rate performances from Jeff Bridges and some of the ing actors. The music is terrific and the cinematography is gorgeous -- though I was disappointed to find out it was all filmed in NEW Mexico (us Easterners were probably easily fooled -- but don't Texans and New Mexicans sense this right off? Perhaps the crew -- 90% British -- don't see any differences between those two states!)It's also very funny in places. But HOHW has a fatal flaw, and that is....plot holes the size of Jupiter.The biggest and most glaring: EVERYTHING in the film hinges on the two bank robbing brother's motivation to save the family farm from foreclosure, by robbing one local bank chain of the petty cash in the drawer (and then laundering that money at casinos, and ultimately, paying their late mother's reverse mortgage off with the stolen cash).I am gobsmacked the film's writers did not bother to research this AT ALL. That is not how reverse mortgages even work. You do not even have to make payments on a reverse mortgage, so it could not be "in arrears". And the mother borrowed only $25,000? That's chump change -- the ranch is clearly hundreds of acres (we see it at the end, stretching to the horizon) and worth at the rock-bottom minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars BEFORE THEY FIND OIL ON IT. So the brothers were never "poor" as Chris Pine alleges at the end, when claiming that's why he robbed banks -- so his two sons would not "grow up poor like he did". OK -- except he wasn't poor. And most people provide for their sons by GETTING A JOB. And maybe, moving somewhere where there are more jobs. Or by SELLING the land (so you could pay off the reverse mortgage legally) and then still having anywhere from several hundred thousand dollars to MILLIONS OF DOLLARS (!!!).On top of this, it is infuriating to think the filmmakers think if you cannot provide your children with MILLIONS OF DOLLARS...they are "poor". There is in their eyes nothing in between foreclosure/welfare and MILLIONS? Nothing like, say, "an ordinary job" and "paying your bills" and "living an honest life"?It's like some weird justification for armed robbery, to "get even" with banks -- who are apparently supposed to forgive all loans, and never demand repayment, and of course, we all know if you own property -- it is "yours" for all eternity, even if you don't pay your taxes, bills or mortgage loans.On top of this; HOW can people who KNOW they have just won the biggest life lotto of all -- owning a ranch pumping $600,000 worth of oil profits every year and ergo, worth at least $20 million -- be whining about "how poor they are" and "how rough they have it" and how they have to be criminals??? That defies all credulity. Most people in their shoes would be on spending sprees with the royalty checks.Some other posters have also noted other stupid stuff like "casinos have cameras" and "since they are already suspect (definitely the Ben Foster character, as he's been shot by police), it would be easy to work backwards, and realize Chris Pine paid off the mortgage on his ranch in a suspicious fashion, and with checks from a casino". The most mundane detective work would have turned up the casino laundering trick and bingo, case solved.Lastly: at the end, Chris Pine is GUT SHOT, and has a bullet in him, but it hardly effects him -- he's not rolling on the ground screaming in pain or dying from peritonitis -- and how did he get the bullet out? going to the hospital would have pointed a big fat arrow at him as part of the robbery team. Did he dig it out himself and do home surgery? WTF?Too bad that nobody edited this or read it before filming, or had a bank loan officers give it a once over -- the devil is in the details, and these flaws keep this from being anything more than a mediocre shoot 'em up robbery film (with debts, also noted by others, to "No Country For Old Men").

nate-204 While this movie held my attention and had *excellent* cinematography, the rest of it fell flat. It's hard to call this a 'character study' when all the characters are essentially the same the entire movie. It's SO slow moving, with sparse and plain dialog with an ending that's more of a 'huh'?? This could have been so much better expanding on any of the backstory or truly making any of these characters real, but I didn't get much out of it. I continue to call BS on many movies nominated for an academy award these days. I wouldn't call this a Western Either. Just the main pairs of characters having similar dialog and otherwise just hanging out together. In short, I was expecting a lot more.