Hell or High Water: More than Just a Heist Movie

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Hell or High Water: More Than Just a Heist Movie By Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="Hell or High Water: More Than Just a Heist Movie" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This week we're going to be talking about Hell or High Water. One of the things that's really cool about Hell or High Water, and one of the things that's really cool about this script by Taylor Sheridan is the way it uses a twist on an old genre to deliver a movie that far exceeds our expectations of the genre. Hell or High Water isn't just a cops-and-robbers-heist-movie, even though it falls into that genre. Hell or High Water is actually a pretty powerful political film. I want to take a moment to talk about how you write a political film. Because, oftentimes, when we sit down to write a political film, we end up standing up on a soap box and screaming our opinions. We end up making the movie about the opinions, rather than about the story. When we do this, although we will get a lot of approbation from people who feel the way we do, it's very hard to move the needle on people who feel differently. It's just like the experience you have on Facebook when your friends de-friend you and you de-friend your friends once you find out their horrific political beliefs. Although this feels good at first, what it really ends up doing is limiting our discourse; it ends up taking away the discussion that actually allows people to change their opinions. Of course, this is part of why we write movies, right? We write movies because we want to help people change. We want to help people see the world in a different way. Part of doing that means bringing them along for the ride, structuring our films in a way that our political message isn't on the surface, but underneath. If you've listened to my podcast on Captain America or many of these other action movies, you know how I feel about those movies. The potential that they have (which they all too often shy away from) to change the way people see things. It’s funny, because when I was a young writer, I was way too snobby to write action movies. I wanted to do the “important” socio-political stuff. And I think now, if I were to return to Hollywood, I would probably be very interested in writing action movies. As I've gotten older, I've realized that action movies may actually be the most powerful political weapon we have, because everybody sees them. When you hide your message inside those two spoonfuls of sugar, you end up with a really powerful product that can sway the beliefs of millions or even hundreds of millions of people. What we're seeing today in Hell or High Water is really cool, because we're seeing an example of a political film, made on a small budget, that uses the genre engine of a traditional cops and robbers structure, to bury that political message inside the product that they already know they want. I like to think of this as "feeding the genre monster” of the audience-- understanding the need that is driving them to buy the ticket, and then delivering even more than they expected. You can think of the political part, what the movie’s really about, as the ingredients. And the experience of the movie, the part the audience is shopping for, as the container. Just like you don’t need to understand every ingredient that goes into making your favorite product, your audience doesn’t need to understand every ingredient that went into creating your film. They just need to understand what the container is promising, and feel, after sampling the product, that you delivered what you promised. Do that, and you can get away with anything. So, this is the first question to ask yourself if you're writing a politic...