David Mackenzie makes tense dramas with room for awkward, entertaining company. We rate his patience with actors and his feel for place; in Hell or High Water, both work better than the script’s occasional explanations of hardship.
Fi1m perspective
The bank robberies in Hell or High Water (2016) have urgency, but David Mackenzie also lets the conversations run. Irritation, affection and worry have time to emerge without anyone needing to announce them. We were more anxious for these men than the familiar pursuit led us to expect, because we had been allowed to enjoy their company, tiresome habits included. Mackenzie understands how much a crime film can gain from people being worth listening to. For us, that patience is his strongest quality.
He reached that modern Western by an indirect route. After his feature debut, The Last Great Wilderness (2002), came Young Adam (2003) and Hallam Foe (2007). Starred Up (2013) put his interest in people under pressure inside a prison. Hell or High Water brought wider recognition, and Outlaw King (2018) moved into large-scale historical drama. He keeps changing genres while retaining his attention to actors.
His collaborators include cinematographer Giles Nuttgens and producer Gillian Berrie, and his working methods favour real locations and collaboration with performers. In Hell or High Water, the contemporary West Texas setting tells us how hard getting by already is, before the crimes make matters worse. Mackenzie lets us notice how much the men depend on one another, even when they would rather not admit it. Taylor Sheridan’s script occasionally spells out the hardship that the faces and places have already made clear. Those explanations feel unnecessary in a film otherwise so good at letting us watch and listen.
There is little romance in this version of the West, which suits people with so few choices. Mackenzie gives the danger weight without having to make the men agreeable at every turn. The pursuit is familiar enough that speed alone would not make it interesting; the divided loyalties and the time spent together give us reasons to care. Start with Hell or High Water, provided a crime film that takes its time over conversations sounds like an evening well spent.
Biography
David Mackenzie is a Scottish film director. He was born on 10 May 1966 in Corbridge, Northumberland, England, and studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. With his brother, the actor Alastair Mackenzie, and producer Gillian Berrie, he co-founded the Glasgow-based production company Sigma Films in the mid-1990s.
Mackenzie's feature films include Young Adam (2003), Hallam Foe (2007), Perfect Sense (2011), Starred Up (2013), Hell or High Water (2016) and Outlaw King (2018). Hell or High Water premiered at Cannes and received four Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture.
