One of my favorite things about Hell or High Water is that they get away with it. well, Toby does anyway. I’d argue that Tanner gets a very Walter White ending where, obviously if you die from a gunshot wound you didn’t get away with anything, but I’d also be hard pressed to say that he “got caught” or “didn’t succeed in his mission.”
And honestly, if Toby had gotten caught I think that would have ruined it for me. It’s not that “the good guy” always has to win in the end, it’s that Toby gets to actually be the good guy*. The movie spends so much time showing audience the economic precarity of this part of America, so much time showing how predatory the banks really are I have a hard time sympathizing with the cop whose goal** is to take the two young men trying to escape from underneath the banks boot and make sure they stay in their place, with boot planted firmly on their neck.
This is the exact problem I keep running into with Justified, another neo-Western with a cowboy cop vs outlaws. Their “criminals of the week” often get fleshed out enough (in actually realistic ways imo, the villains of the week are rarely evil instead their ppl who made a few bad decisions and are now stuck in whatever predicament forces them to cross Raylen) that when the episode ends with them in cuffs headed to prison it rarely feels like “Justice is served” as much as “Raylan and the marshals trampled on the freedom of a human who deserved better.” While this may be realistic, my issue is with the framing. The shows tries hard to convince you “sure, so-and-so is actually a decent person, and their reason for doing this particular crime is actually pretty understandable, but if you do crime you need to be arrested” which simply… doesn’t fly with me to say the least.
Sorry for turning this post into being about Justified lmao. The point is: Toby getting away with his plot to save the family ranch and rescue his children from a life of poverty is a welcome change to the Neo-Western formula. Also, the gas station scene with the obnoxious metal head in the line green whip fucking GOES.
*yea, he’s of the Jesse Pinkman school of hero-dom, where he’s kinda sketchy but compared to the ppl around him he’s basically a saint. Still the good guy though.
**This is, ofc, not the Texas Ranger’s stated goal; he’s simply doing his job and trying to stop a couple people from breaking the law. But intent doesn’t matter materially, regardless of the Ranger’s values what he is in fact doing is acting as a stormtrooper for finance capital in assisting the economic devastation of the region. This would hold true regardless, but he’s also smart enough to know what effect he’s actually having.