Hell or Highwater is fairly typical in that it romanticizes – perhaps even mythologizes – the American Criminal as a sort of tragically broken figure trapped in a life that doesn’t suit his personality or movie star good looks. Which is not to say that the movie isn’t good—it is. In fact, it’s really good. It skips the mindless violence of most thrillers. The dialogue is sharp. The pacing is steady, favoring character development over a rocket ship that hurtles the viewer through the first act.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster play brothers (think the Riggins boys of Friday Night Lights in about twenty years) pulling off low-scale bank robberies in small Texas towns. They’re trying to pay off their mothers’s land, hoping to deed it to Pine’s younger sons. This information is parceled out slowly throughout the movie, and to great effect. Soon enough, the brother bank-robbers catch the attention of a set of Texas Rangers played by Jeff Brides and Gil Birmingham.

Bridges and Birmingham’s banter is laced with a familiarity that makes it seem as if they really have worked together for decades. To this end, Bridges’ character comes back again and again to what a New York Times reviewer called “affectionate” racism. You know the type. It presents itself in break rooms and living rooms, comments that draw their “humor” from stereotypes and a claim of friendship or familiarity. Always followed by: It’s okay, I have lots of black friends!

Like I said, you know the type.

Hell, there’s no need to be cagey about this—I used to be the type. Of course, I never would’ve called myself a racist. We never do. But if I were watching a movie where an older white man “affectionately” ribbed his Mexican-Comanchee colleague… I would’ve laughed. In the theater. In the car on the way home. While telling my friends about the movie later in the week. And then he said…

I am willing to grant screenwriter Taylor Sheridan was attempting to go with realism in his depiction of west Texas. But when a character is blatantly racist and the target of that racism just smiles and ribs him back…at best it feels like a missed opportunity. At worst it’s another example of a white writer downplaying the reality of racism. Because while this back-and-forth might be seen as “affectionate” to white people, the day-to-day reality of women and men of color is cheapened for a few throwaway jokes.

(There’s a spoiler coming, so if you want to see this movie – and I still think you should – then perhaps you should stop reading now.)

Sheridan tries to let the white viewer (and perhaps himself) off the hook, of course. Near the end of the movie, Foster kills Birmingham just as Bridges is about to deliver another one of his sharp-mouthed one-liners. Bridges’ performance is heartbreaking in its believability. He’s lost a friend. Somebody he obviously cares about deeply. But even the performance isn’t enough to save the movie’s biggest sin.

If movies like Hell or Highwater want to speak to the problems facing our country – and the constant shots of debt relief billboards is a pretty obvious clue into Sheridan’s agenda—they need to force white viewers to finally reckon with their privilege. They need to show what lies beneath Birmingham’s character, exposing the discomfort and pain and anger.

This isn’t moralizing. Instead, it’s telling the story more authentically, without regard to the fragility of its white audience. Because that’s what a great movie does. It forces us to be convicted by our privilege, our racism. It opens us up and bothers the places we try to hide – try to deny exist – until they’re so raw we can no longer ignore them. Because if we can be convicted, we can be changed. And isn’t that the point?

Bryan Bliss is the author of Meet Me Here and No Parking at the End Times. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and kids.

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