[4] In 2016, Mackenzie's film Hell or High Water premiered at Cannes and was theatrically released in the United States in August.

[1][5] After studying at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, Mackenzie began his directorial career with a series of well-regarded shorts, the first being Dirty Diamonds (1994).

His brother, actor Alastair Mackenzie, plays a character looking to exact revenge by burning down his wife's lover's house in the Highlands.

[13] In 2005 Mackenzie directed Asylum, adapted from Patrick McGrath's book and starring Natasha Richardson, Sir Ian McKellen, Hugh Bonneville and Marton Coskas.

The film is adapted from the book by Peter Jinks and follows the voyeuristic title character as he runs away to Edinburgh and becomes transfixed by a beautiful woman who looks uncannily like his late mother.

The film follows Ashton Kutcher's LA gigolo as he begins living with a rich older client played by Anne Heche.

The film follows a burgeoning romance between Ewan McGregor and Eva Green against the backdrop of a global pandemic of people losing their senses one by one.

It features Jack O'Connell as a young offender who is moved into an adult prison where his estranged and incarcerated father resides.

[26] Mackenzie returned to the United States to direct Hell or High Water (2016), starring Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster.

[30] Described as an epic saga of the secret history of the 1930s American heartland, it chronicles the mythic conflict and bloody struggle between big money and the downtrodden, God and greed, charlatans and prophets.

[33] In 2018 Mackenzie's tenth feature film, Outlaw King, starring Chris Pine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Florence Pugh and Billy Howle, was released on Netflix.

His father was Royal Navy Rear Admiral David John Mackenzie (3 October 1929 – 26 November 2015) who served from 1943 to 1984 and fought in Falklands War,[37] and his mother was Ursula Sybil Balfour (31 January 1940 – 11 July 2015).