[CRITICAL] COMANCHERIA – Penelopethemovie

COMANCHERIA (Hell or high water in VO) opens on a scene of turning almost trivial : two men wearing balaclavas threatened the teller to steal a few tickets. Men leave, they discover their faces (Chris Pine and Ben Foster). The simplicity with which they have acted seems anachronistic.

“How can we still break the bank in the 21st century in the United States ? It is a thing of the Far West, it is not possible any more today…”

This is the question asked by the audience, but also with the question to the Texas ranger in charge of the investigation (Jeff Bridges). And then suddenly one understands. While our two robbers stop in a service station, a cowboy falls from a horse to buy a tinker in the shop. They are full, when suddenly tumbles a sports car, green fluo, led by two guys to the short week, who assaulted them.

A wind of nostalgia blows over these little towns become the ghosts, where it invokes the mythology of the Great West, and its bloody battles, to give meaning to his acts. The “hero” puts himself outside of the Law, because he opposes the injustice imposed by the institutions (the bank has stolen from his field), so that the avenger wants the form, because it is its reason to live (literally, he does not know what to make of his life after retirement). This binary opposition may appear simplistic, but director David Mackenzie makes this neo-western as a probable future in an America bleeding by the financial crisis triggered by the explosion of the housing bubble (it will look The Big short to understand), and by the rush of oil and gas from shale (see Promised Land). In this remote corner of Texas, which lives on the surface of the Earth has more value, but what there is below can make you outrageously rich.

COMANCHERIA cache a sense of fatalism bitter-sweet Click To Tweet

Robbing the bank in order to better reimburse, and recover their lands, it is a little to do the picnic in the system. Without the Robins of the wood, the two brothers robbers are the vigilantes hidden social class who wants to get rid of the endemic poverty passed on from generation to generation like a genetic disease. The order, vacillating, still holds on its two legs, and he shoots hard. But one feels that its finest days are behind him, the image of Jeff Bridges in Texas ranger gâteux and trembling. The actor cabotine (too much, probably) but perhaps to conceal a lack of self-confidence. The time of the final confrontation has come, but the old lion finally is afraid. It feels like balloons deflate. After him, the chaos, without a doubt, a world of Mad Max that would be insidiously installed while the previous put on peacefully on the slippers of his retirement. A slow revelation smoothly, without drum or trumpet.

What kind of future Chris Pine buys-t-he to his sons by making them so wealthy ? That will be worth the money once the banks have made a vacuum around them ? Stripped of its subtleties of comedy and action film, COMANCHERIA cache a sense of fatalism bitter-sweet, preview scary of a future which will eventually rule the law of the stronger, a future against which we may not have much, if not fight.