Arguably Taylor Sheridan’s best movie has turned 10 years old, and it beats all of his Western TV shows combined. 20 years ago, Sheridan was a largely unknown, jobbing actor taking bit parts on Veronica Mars or CSI. Cut to 2026, the Taylor Sheridan TV empire consists of huge shows like Yellowstone and its many offshoots, Lioness and The Madison.

As a writer and showrunner, Sheridan is currently one of the biggest names in the business. This career change began shortly after Sheridan quit his Sons of Anarchy supporting role, after being informed he wasn’t worth being given a mild pay raise. Despite having no real experience as a screenwriter, Sheridan then set about penning his so-called American Frontier trilogy, consisting of Sicario, Wind River and Hell or High Water.

All three, in their own ways, updated the Western genre for contemporary audiences, and explored themes such as generational violence, racism and poverty in modern America. While the other two entries tend to snatch away all the attention, the Sheridan-penned Hell or High Water is still one of his best movies to date.

Hell Or High Water Holds Up 10 Years Later

A signature of Sheridan’s screenplays is his focus on characters and dialogue over complex plots. The synopsis for Hell or High Water makes it sound simple, but his movies and TV series always have way more going on beneath the surface. In one sense, Hell or High Water is a buddy road movie that focuses on two sets of buddies: the bank-robbing Howard brothers Toby and Tanner (Chris Pine and Ben Foster), and their Texas Ranger pursuers, Marcus and Alberto (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham).

The movie is practically a hangout movie for its first half – until bloodshed and tragedy inevitably ruin the fun in the second. Hell or High Water is a beautifully crafted and acted thriller, and features one of Jeff Bridges’ finest performances. Credit obviously must go to Sheridan’s superb screenplay, but the direction from David Mackenzie deserves equal praise.

He makes audiences fall in love with both sets of protagonists, making the inevitable clash between them all the more devastating. In the same way Heat wants you to root for both the cops and the criminals, Hell or High Water pulls the same trick with equal power. While it can’t really be classified as an action movie, the occasional bursts of violence still carry a real visceral edge.

Hell Or High Water Started Taylor Sheridan’s Westerns Trend

In short, a decade on, Hell or High Water is still a modern classic. It also kicked off Sheridan’s run of Neo-Westerns, a genre he soon became the unofficial king of. Sicario has definite shades of the genre, but in just about every way, Hell or High Water feels like an old-school Western dressed in modern clothing.

It wears the tropes of Westerns proudly, from following two outlaw brothers robbing banks to a final shootout with the police that ends poorly for one of them. Of course, Sheridan subverts a lot of the clichés, but there is no hiding Hell or High Water’s influences. It feels like the kind of stripped-down, violent character study a filmmaker like Sam Peckinpah could have helmed, with actors like Robert Duvall, Warren Oates or Steve McQueen starring.

In a sense, Hell or High Water is the movie that established the Taylor Sheridan brand. He may branch out to other genres occasionally – like his spy saga Lioness – but Sheridan’s bread and butter is very much the contemporary Western. Between the American Frontier movies and Yellowstone, he’s mined dramatic gold by contrasting the past with the present, and how the inevitable march of time brings both good and bad things with it.

Hell Or High Water Beats Every Taylor Sheridan TV Show

There was a leanness and focus to Sheridan’s earlier work that, for obvious reasons, got a little lost with his transition to television. There is a world where Yellowstone itself was a two-hour movie that told a complete story, instead of a sprawling five-season show that continues to spawn spinoffs and prequels.

Of course, part of the appeal of Yellowstone is getting to hang out on the Dutton ranch with the main characters and get an insight into the ranching lifestyle. That said, Hell or High Water is a mere 100 minutes long, and is such a complete meal it requires no sequels or offshoots to extend the story.

While opinions vary, the tight construction of Sheridan’s first run of films like Hell or High Water or Wind River is hard to beat. They have great characters, quotable dialogue and memorable setpieces, in a way that makes the likes of 1923 or Mayor of Kingstown feel positively padded at times. Each scene has a purpose and moves the story toward its inevitable conclusion, whereas some Sheridan shows feel like they’re figuring things out on the fly.

Taylor Sheridan Needs To Make More Movies Like Hell Or High Water

Sheridan’s last movie was the fiery Those Who Wish Me Dead, a 2021 thriller best described as Backdraft meets Die Hard. Again, it was a hard-edged thriller with very little fat on the bone, and with a killer cast (Angelina Jolie, Jon Bernthal, Nic Hoult, etc). Since then, Sheridan has been exclusively busy with his TV work, but it would be nice to see him return to his roots.

Thankfully, there are signs of this coming to pass. He’s dusting off an action screenplay he penned years ago called F.A.S.T., which he will produce while regular collaborator Ben Richardson directs. Sheridan will also co-write the screenplay for the upcoming Call of Duty movie, which Peter Berg will helm.

Sadly, there are no signs of Sheridan himself returning behind the viewfinder, though he has helmed episodes of Lioness or Landman in recent years. There is something about the movie format that forces Sheridan to pen more focused work, and as Sicario or Hell or High Water has proved, this is where he shines the most. There’s no fluff or padding, as these movies cut right to the heart of what he’s trying to say.

That might be why Hell or High Water is held in such regard. It’s an emotional, lyrical Neo-Western with career-best work from its leads, and while it ends on an ambiguous note, it’s also not teasing a sequel or TV offshoot. This is the story Sheridan wanted to tell, and while it might be a Western, it pops the myth of the genre by having no clear good or bad guys and, most importantly of all, no “winners.”

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  Release Date

  August 11, 2016
  

  Runtime

  102 minutes

  Director

  David Mackenzie

  Writers

  Taylor Sheridan

  Producers

  Carla Hacken, Julie Yorn, Peter Berg, Sidney Kimmel

  
  

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  Birthdate

  
  May 21, 1970
  

  Birthplace

  Cranfills Gap, Texas, USA

  Notable Projects

  Sicario, Wind River, Hell or High Water