Jeff Bridges doesn't have much difficulty playing a racially insensitive Texas Ranger in Hell or High Water: on the scale between one (articulating normally) and the barely-comprehensible 10 of his True Grit performance, this salty character turn probably rates around a 6. Chasing a pair of cowboy bank robbers halfway across the state, Bridges's Marcus is in cinema's long tradition of cracker Texas lawmen - but on the more rational end.He might drive his mixed-race partner (Gil Birmingham) up the wall with "half-breed" slurs, intended as dry jokes, but Marcus isn't anything like the despicable tyrant that Bridges' virtual twin, Kris Kristofferson, played in John Sayles's Lone Star. He believes in the law, doesn't suffer fools, and speaks - or gurgles - in that basso profundo way Bridges has, whatever's on his mind.This muscular heist thriller has contemporary Western stylings, and a surprising source - David Mackenzie, the British director of Young Adam and Starred Up. It has interesting stakes and more textured character work than you can shake a stick at.Chris Pine and Ben Foster have a rock-solid brotherly double act happening as, respectively, Toby and Tanner, the two grubbily unshaven modern outlaws Bridges is closing in on. Tanner's done jail time, and he's the one who knows, or thinks he knows, how to go about pulling off a string of bank robberies.Toby, a beginner at this, is the one in dire need: not only is he a divorced father of two boys, with alimony, but the fictitious Texas Midland bank is about to foreclose on their late mother's property, which has a gold mine, or rather an oil mine, right underneath it.The brothers' Robin Hood-like scheme is to hit, again and again, branches of the very bank that wittingly sold their mom an unpayable mortgage - essentially robbing Peter to pay Peter, if they can purloin enough before the foreclosure deadline.The villain, then, is the US financial system, and the backdrop is economic misery - debt-relief billboards by the roadsides, waitresses and casino escorts desperate to make ends meet.This regional focus is a really strong foundation for a film that's deeper than it looks, a chase movie with a moral conscience that's neither obvious nor one-sided. © The Daily Telegraph..