Oscars final designs - Hell or High Water

Visually, I feel this poster is one of my strongest ideas. Hell or High Water is the story of two brothers in very different places in life, but both desperate, robbing a series of banks that are planning to foreclose on their family ranch. The film deals with desperation, so I thought visually nothing conveys that in a more striking sense than staring down the barrel of a gun. I went through a lot of variation with the design of the central gun image, trying to make it look more realistic, or like a specific weapon, but I decided that the message is clear and the image needs to be simple and clear to communicate it successfully.
I have a tendency to overcomplicate some of my work, and I wanted this project for me has been both a challenge and a chance to boil my work down to what works and what works and being honest with myself about those aspects of my practice. Movie posters have to be immediately engaging while communicating to the audience what the film will be about, or some idea of what it will be like. Because of this, I wanted to really focus on the message first, and constructing the visuals around that, because I feel the message is the core of Illustration as a practice, and I don't want to be making work that looks nice but has no weight behind it.