The score for Hell or High Water is by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, who seem to have carved out a niche for themselves as film music’s go-to guys for serious dramas set in the American west. The film looks like a fairly straightforward crime thriller from the outside, but it is actually much deeper than that, and tackles some rather weighty subjects, offering a searing criticism of aspects of the American banking system, looking at the plight of the poor in rural communities, and examining the relationship between two brothers who have reached a breaking point and have nothing left to lose.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as two brothers who begin a crime spree, robbing local banks Jeff Bridges plays the dogged Texas Ranger sent to stop them. It is against this backdrop of deprivation that Scottish director David Mackenzie’s film Hell or High Water is set.

It’s a place rich in oil and other natural resources, but some of the smaller towns in that area look like the apocalypse has blown through, leaving behind abandoned buildings, dusty streets, and little in the way of money or opportunity for the hardy people who continue to eke out a living there. The stretches of road between Amarillo and Albuquerque, and between El Paso and Midland-Odessa, cut through some of the most inhospitable landscapes I have ever seen miles and miles of semi-arid desert, flat as a pancake, dotted with creosote bushes, yucca plants, cholla cactuses, and the occasional corpse of an armadillo, but not much else. As an Englishman who grew up in that country’s verdant landscape, the first time I drove through eastern New Mexico and western Texas was an eye-opening experience.

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