Posted by Ken Spivey
Some movies are simply made better by enjoying them with a six pack of beer and several of your closest, silliest friends. Unfortunately, when I watched “Come Hell or High Water” I was alone drinking a Coke…so the desired experience was diminished. Yet, to better relay the plot of the film, I shall use the lens of myself after about six shots of “Wild Turkey.” This shall lend itself better to the film’s narrative style.
So, a man with a beard gets out of prison and comes back home to his freight company. His daughter had been running the freight company while he was away, both during the bearded man’s time in captivity and his brief tenure as a war hero. There is another man in the film who is really not the “bad guy”, but rather the guy without facial hair, thus making him diametrically opposed to the man with facial hair. When the bearded one returns, the shaved one plots his revenge and sends his assistant to kidnap the freighter’s daughter. Meanwhile, a boxing match breaks out in the woods without any provocation. After the random bit of deep woods fisticuffs, the film goes back to the struggle between the two rivals and ends with a shooting match between the bearded man and the shaved man, and the kidnapper then decides to shoot the campfire.
Yes, this was extremely confusing. Sadly, even my aforementioned summary is being kind to the film. It lacked a true story arc. The characters were not fleshed out and merely recited lines as opposed to putting any emotion or thought behind them. The only decent character in the film was the senile old black man who would share “pearls of wisdom” that were almost, just almost full thoughts…but not quite.
