Hell or High Water - Commentary

Sam Burnham, Curator
@C_SamBurnham

Due to the strong themes in the film, I decided to do a commentary piece on them in addition to the movie review.

As I mentioned in the review, the fictitious Teas Midlands Bank plays the roles of victim and villain. As a regional bank headquartered in Ft. Worth but with small branches in several small rural West Texas towns, the bank’s practices and policies keep it successful at the expense of the residents of these towns and the surrounding farms. And the townspeople hate the bank for it.

Ive mentioned community banking on this page before. I do as little business with large financial institutions as is absolutely possible. I’d rather not do business with any bank whose headquarters is not in my town. That’s not always realistic.Market and regulatory issues cause my bank to sell 100% of the mortgages they originate to larger institutions. It’s just not worth it for them to keep mortgages in house. But a bank that depends on the health of your community is a bank that will benefit your community. A bank that doesn’t depend on the health of your community will have different goals.

In Hell or High Water we see a large regional bank and big oil doing well financially. But there’s a price for that success. It’s a price paid for by the community. One scene stands out even more than the rest.

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The Pivotal Scene, Commentary-wise

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Texas Rangers Marcus Hamilton and Alberto Parker, played by Bridges and Birmingham, respectively, are sitting in front of a small town restaurant staking out a branch of Texas Midlands Bank. Here’s the peak of their dialogue:

​Alberto Parker: Do you want to live here? Got an old hardware store that charges twice what Home Depot does, one restaurant with a rattlesnake for a waitress. I mean, how's someone supposed to make a living here?
Marcus Hamilton: People have made a living here for 150 years.
Alberto Parker: Well people lived in caves for 150k years, they don't do it no more.
Marcus Hamilton: Ahhhh well maybe your people did.
Alberto Parker: You're people did too. A long time ago your ancestors was the indians until someone came along and killed them. Broke em down made you into one of them. 150 years ago all this was my ancestors land. Everything you could see, everything you saw yesterday. Until the grandparents of these folks took it. Now it's been taken from them. Cept it ain't no army doin' it, it's those sons of bitches right there. [points at Texas Midland Bank.]

So we reflect on the ways big business has hindered the small town ways of life. Big Banks, Walmart, Amazon, Big Oil, even considering the impact Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds had on the situation I covered in Tobacco Road, all these take money from small towns and offer little in return for it. Without a strong local economy, people remain in poverty. Only someone with a way to offer big money to big business is going to benefit from big business. And no one is getting rich working for someone else these days.

I’m not saying these things to bellyache or spread doom and gloom. These are the very reasons we need to support local businesses, especially banks. It’s why we need to support local enterprise. It’s why we need to support small businesses, entrepreneurial start ups.

Hell or High Water wasn’t just a good movie. It was an important movie. While still avoiding spoilers, it showed a fictional attempt by a few victims to get even with the big guys. I don’t advocate violence, robbery, or chaos. I’m not endorsing their methods. But it’s past time that we fought back. Big Business and Big Government are usually two heads of the same monster. We’ve got to do what we can to get out from under that monster.