REVIEW - HELL OR HIGH WATER (DAVID MACKENZIE)

You'll find plenty high praise for David MacKenzie's Hell or High Water elsewhere, but not here. All that I could expect from a modern-day crime Western, it delivers - no more, no less. As this genre is designed to do, MacKenzie's film, from Taylor Sheridan's script, satisfies one's every desire in what it ought to accomplish, and its proficiency is regarded as adequate justification for its existence. So Hell or High Water is consistently engaging, never surprising, characterized by both a lack of true ambition and its relative success within its modest aspirations. Crime dramas with social consciences are a dime a dozen these days, but it's interesting to gauge the juxtaposition of this sense of moral responsibility with the usual codes of Westerns - Sheridan's apolitical approach is a wise, appropriate one, and he possesses a fine skill for courting offence without actually causing it. Between his dialogue, Gilles Nuttgens' handsome cinematography, and the vibrant, unfussy work of the whole ensemble (with the usual exception of an over-acting Ben Foster), Hell or High Water marks a cumulative effort to cut a film entirely from 'local colour,' and it's a strong effort. And yet, for all that its makers may be wise to every last detail of rural Texan landscape and character, this quality produces a film that's perfectly functional, but nothing else. I reserve high praise for high achievement only, and it's thus that Hell or High Water appears a little lowly.

REVIEW - SICARIO (DENIS VILLENEUVE)

A stylish thriller whose technical prowess is as exhilarating to behold as it is admirable, communicating writer Taylor Sheridan's simplistic story with verve and vibrancy. Sheridan lays a bare narrative out bare; director Denis Villeneuve turns bare into spare, constructing powerful sensory experiences out of otherwise simple scenes with a startling soundscape and striking cinematography. Sicario has many merits, but chief among them is the highly successful collaboration between Villeneuve and his DP Roger Deakins - the two have a neatly matched artistic sensibility, and their combined storytelling technique is remarkably cohesive. Indeed, Villeneuve and Deakins are so well matched that Sicario slightly suffers as the work of art that they clearly strive for it to be - its stylistic parameters are too confined, too closed to interpretation, just a bit too perfect, and the film loses something in the way of humanity and plausibility as a result. It gains so much in the process, though, functioning as much as a tremendously tense thriller as it does a deeply unnerving horror film - the two converge in moments of disarming distress, accentuated by fine sound design and a complimentary, elemental score by Johann Johannsson. Motions toward political drama are less effective, unwanted diversions into vaguely allegorical territory from the script, but the film's stylistic strengths are enough to overcome Sicario's missteps.