Oh, I don't think, I know.
That's adorable, kiddo.
Problem is this is neither a "blockbuster" nor a "crowd-pleaser."
The universal praise, 98% critic rating on RT, 90% audience score on RT, and box office say otherwise. Hell or High Water is what we call a "sleeper hit."
It's a dark and gritty crime drama
You think Hell or High Water is dark? Wow... It's as innocent and light-hearted as can be. Please never watch the movie Se7en. You might kill yourself...
It has more in common with critically acclaimed films like No Country For Old Men and Sicario than it does the popcorn films you mentioned.
I agree that it has much in common with Sicario, as that had more in common with summer blockbusters and Marvel movies than the awards-bait its team marketed it as (obviously the Academy saw right through this ploy, which is the reason it only received a few technical nods).
As for No Country for Old Men, the only thing they have in common is the West Texas setting. No County is a minimalist masterpiece while High Water is more about spectacle (like a summer blockbuster...). For example, the soundtracks. No Country had none. That is a bold, badass, and risky move. High Water on the other hand had a very on-the-nose soundtrack. It was still a very good soundtrack (any soundtrack with Townes Van Zandt is a winner in my book), but it was a very safe and cliche and predictable soundtrack as one would expect from a neo-Western summer popcorn movie set in Texas.
And there's also the characters. First, Ed Tom Bell vs. Marcus Hamilton. What does Bell muse about in No Country? The dark side of human nature and the inherent evil of man and how things only seem to be getting worse and the meaninglessness of it all. Really heavy, dark sh!t, right? What does Hamilton muse on? His partner's race... Hamilton is a very simple and crowd-pleasing character who never says anything controversial to upset the audience's sensibilities (don't say his racist jokes were controversial; they were merely used for light-hearted, easy laughs). Hamilton's partner, Parker, muses on the similarities between the white man taking the Native Americans' land and the banks taking it from the white man, but this comparison is neither clever nor accurate, but it's vague enough and accessible enough to appeal to those just looking for some summer popcorn entertainment.
Then we've got Llewelyn vs. Toby. They are both normal men who put themselves in a dangerous situation because of greed. The difference is that High Water forces sympathy for Toby by giving him a "justified" excuse for his greed, i.e., the evil bank is going to take the family ranch, so it's easy for the audience to get on board with him. Llewelyn on the other hand is just plain greedy and he puts his life and the lives of his family at risk to keep the money he stumbled upon by chance. In the end, he dies because he lets his guard down to have a few beers with the woman by the pool who's not his wife. Nothing sympathetic about this character, but he's compelling because he is human and there is no forced sympathy.
We've also got Anton and Tanner who are the resident psychopaths in their respective films. The difference is we have absolutely no clue what makes Anton tick and why he is what he is and the way he is, and it doesn't matter because you can't take your eyes off this mysterious psychopath when he's on screen, whereas Tanner is very much his stock character, i.e., an otherwise normal individual who was forced to kill his evil stepfather and was hardened by prison. It's very easy to accept him as a likable psycho for a popcorn movie audience because of this forced sympathy.
Everything about this film screams awards-bait.
Lol, no, but I will say its chances of getting a best picture nod are much better nowadays since the Academy has been much more kind to summer blockbusters recently (Mad Max: Fury Road, Inception, Up, Toy Story 3, The Help, District 9, and Hugo and Avatar despite their release dates), so, sure, it could get some awards attention, but that doesn't make it any less a summer popcorn movie...
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