No Country for Old Men
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Movie Reviews of No Country for Old Men
Movie Review: WHAT A GREAT ENDING
Summary: 5 Stars
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
I don't know about you but I have always been a huge fan of the Coen Brothers Joel and Ethan, I have liked every film the two have put together. This is no exception and is just another classic in a long list of classics, both theatrically and on DVD this is a brilliant film. I can honestly say that a lot of the time I do not agree with the winners or even the nominees chosen by the Academy for the Oscar but they got it right with this one. By the way I do not care what people think, that ending was BRILLIANT.
The story is all about Llewelyn Moss [Josh Brolin] a normal every day guy who happens to stumble upon something he should not have. When he comes across a massacre and ends up leaving the area with a bag full of money a killer [Javier Bardem] comes after him and one of the best movies ever made starts to unfold. Add in a sheriff who is trying to put this all together played by Tommy Lee Jones and another hired hand played by Woody Harrelson and you have one great scenario taking place. This movie has every thong you could want in a film, there is some good humor although it is on the darker side. There is also not only some good action going on but a really dramatic tale of greed. Don't let any one tell you differently this movie is all about greed and obsession. One mans combo of the two leaves not only him but his family in danger that may even lead to death. Another's combo of the two leads him down the same path while another's completely breaks him. It may seem confusing reading this but when you watch it you will get it, and dare I say you will enjoy it.
Writers/directors/producers Coen Brothers have crafted one of the best films to come out in years. The direction of this film can be felt threw out the entire thing and the screenplay is amazing. This could be the best film the two have put together and that is really saying something, come on just think of what these two have made. Acting wise this film shines just as much as Josh Brolin gives one of the best performances of his career. I was really rooting for this guy during this movie even though he brings it all on himself, but man does he give Bardem's character a run for his money. Woody Harrelson is just as good in this film as a hired hand trying to get the money back for his employer. He really shines with his sense of humor in this film and the way he carries himself. Tommy Lee Jones as usual is great as the sheriff who is determined to find his man, so much so that it brings him down. It is somewhat disappointing knowing about the drama going on between him and the studio about this film, mainly because he may never work with the Coen Brothers again. But aside from that we have what has got to be one of the greatest performances in cinematic history, and I am serious when I say that. Javier Bardem turned in one of the best performances I have ever seen, really brought to life one of the most interesting characters I have had the pleasure of viewing.
This film is definitely worth your money, I say buy this not rent it. I hear people complain about the ending of this film all the time and I don't understand why. I thought that it was one of the most brilliant endings in a long time; I never thought it would end like that. Maybe because it isn't what would be considered a typical ending people hated on it, but I think that it what makes it so good. I loved it and so did my brother who watched it with me, at least one person agreed with me on that ending.
Movie Review: No Country For Anyone
Summary: 5 Stars
"Misguided souls will tell you that No Country for Old Men is out for blood, focused on vengeance and unconcerned with the larger world outside a standard-issue suspense plot. Those people, of course, are deaf, dumb and blind to anything that isn't spelled out between commercials on dying TV networks. McCarthy reveals a soulless America that is no country for anyone, never mind old men." Peter Travers
Cormac McCarthy's book from whence this film came is a masterpiece. The Coen Bros. have done homage to McCarthy. Not much, if anything veered from the original manuscript. Magnificent is how I would describe this film. The characters were all as I pictured in my mind. Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is the hard nosed, difficult to please but compassionate codger he was meant to be. He knows the country is in trouble- drugs have taken over his West Texas area and nothing but trouble is to come.
Trouble comes by the dozen and before too many scenes there are blood, bones and bodies strewn throughout the landscape. The man who has caused this massacre is Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem. And by the way Mr Bardem won an Oscar for his portrayal. When you think of the worst of the worst there is Chigurh. Probably the most heinous killer in filmdom history. He likes to play games and will flip a coin for your life. Something went wrong with one of his drug deals and all were killed and the money and drugs are gone. Llewellyn Moss played brilliantly by Josh Brolin finds the money and the drugs and all Hell is about to break loose for the man.
From one horrendous scene to the next, we sit on tenterhooks, holding our breath while Chigurh and Moss play cat and mouse. Action aplenty. Words of wisdom and grief from Sheriff Bell and his crew. The scenery, the photography, the score are all brilliant. Kelly MacDonald who plays Moss's wife and is an absolute smash I remembered from the BBC series "State of Play'.
"Still, if "No Country for Old Men" were a simple face-off between the sheriff's goodness and Chigurh's undiluted evil, it would be a far stiffer, less entertaining picture. Llewellyn is the wild card -- a good old boy who lives on the borderline between good luck and bad, between outlaw and solid citizen -- and Mr. Brolin is the human center of the movie, the guy you root for and identify with even as the odds against him grow steeper by the minute. And the minutes fly by, leaving behind some unsettling notions about the bloody, absurd intransigence of fate and the noble futility of human efforts to master it. Mostly, though, "No Country for Old Men" leaves behind the jangled, stunned sensation of having witnessed a ruthless application of craft." A.O. Scott
The best film of the year and it garnered an Oscar. Well deserved, the film was everything it should have been and more. Cormac McCarthy has been honored.
Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 04-13-08
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
In the Valley of Elah
Coen Brothers Gift Set (Fargo / Miller's Crossing / Barton Fink / Raising Arizona / Blood Simple)
Movie Review: No Country for Anybody
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie was both creepy and excellent; well-done and horrifying because it shows us, better than anything I've ever seen, exactly what America has become: a place where stalking evil thrives.
Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, is the ultimate, pure, psychopathic killer and conveys all the legendary traits of this sub-species of human with chilling conviction. He doesn't just lack a conscience, he has his own "code of honor" that bids him to revile and destroy those poor humans who make their decisions based on emotion that Chigurh simply cannot understand except as a weakness, a flaw.
The movie also depicts the state of our society very well - a society where money and greed lead to drugs and inhumanity to man, and are becoming more and more normalized, part of the landscape. Meanwhile, Sheriff Ed John Bell, (played by Tommy Lee Jones, the "old man", talks about the fact that his country is not what it used to be and doesn't realize that it is just that the same evil still exists, it just wears a different face. He worries about the drugs and the greed and the horror of what is going on without realizing that all of that is a product of the very government he fought for in WW II. In the old days, the U.S. government did its dirty work in other countries or behind a mask; now, it comes home to roost. This is indicated by the fact that one of the hired killers of the drug cartel is a former military officer (Wells, played by Woody Harrelson) and the drug cartel itself is a "big business" with offices in a high-rise and an accountant. The fact that psychopathic behavior is increasing in America is remarked on by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell who, while reading a newspaper says:
"Here last week they found this couple out in California. They rent out rooms for old people, kill'em, bury'em in the yard, cash their social security checks. Well, they'd tortur'em first, I don't know why. Maybe the television set was broke."
The "regular guy", Llewelyn Moss played by Josh Brolin, isn't a dummy, but he's no match for the real, live, stalking evil of a psychopath because he does have a conscience and he doesn't have the ability to think like a psychopath - totally without emotion. In a sense, what happens between Moss and Chigurh is representative of what happens in general, in society, between psychopaths and normal humans, even very smart normal humans, especially when those normal humans think they can take on a psychopath alone. The same could actually be said about Chigurh's former colleague, Wells:
Anton Chigurh: And you know what's going to happen now. You should admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it.
Carson Wells: You go to hell.
Anton Chigurh: Let me ask you something. If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
Carson Wells: Do you have any idea how goddamn crazy you are?
Anton Chigurh: You mean the nature of this conversation?
Carson Wells: I mean the nature of you.
The psychopath: an unstoppable force of nature. And that is how this movie depicts them; Agents of fate.
Anyway, the whole movie struck me as a metaphor for the increase of psychopathy in our world and its corrupting effect on human society. It's a horrifying, but accurate picture, and a lot of lessons can be extracted from "No Country for Old Men". Recommended.
Movie Review: Call It...
Summary: 5 Stars
Here is one of the best pictures of the year. Another film alongside "There Will Be Blood" and "The Assassination of Jesse James" where the cinematography will make you sweat. Examining the opening moments, it's no wonder why. The shots of a vast, unforgiving landscape accompanied by a voiceover by Tommy Lee Jones, who's voice speaks with experience and wonder, assuring us that this is no country for old men.
What can be said about the Coen brother's that has not been said already? Everyone and their cousin knows they make tremendous films, amongst them "Fargo" and the incomparible "Miller's Crossing." With "No Country," they've adapted a grainy, modern western novel into a grainy, contemporary cinema about the nature of men in a world that knows of unspeakable crime, and therefore, no body speaks of it. Amid all the film's magnificent set pieces, performances and violent swagger, the best thing it has going for it is the screenplay, adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel, using much of the original text. Here is rare experience when seeing the film is more exciting than reading the book, because the dialogue, so rich with earnest subtext is spoken by actors who know precisely how to deliver a line and precisely what it means, even when what it means isn't what is said. Examine the scene at the roadside gas station, much appreciated by Roger Ebert, where Anton Chigurh has a discussion with the attendant. We know Chigurh would have no qualms about killing the man, we've seen him kill, and as a character later states, would kill this man just for "inconveniencing" him. Attend well to the look Chigurh gives him when he leaves, the way he raises his brow at the man. We know exactly the reason he gives him this look even when the attendant doesn't.
Notice I have mentioned barely anything of the plot. That would serve little purpose with this film about to hit DVD. I urge you to go and read the book, and then watch the film, and see for yourself why this is absolutley the best adapted screenplay of the year. The plot itself is half the fun, or maybe even 40 percent. I found myself not so much concerned with the plot, but how its moved through by these characters. The ensemble cast is filled out perfectly with Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and the calmly frightening Javier Bardem, speaking with a persian accent that is almost scarier than his amazing tracking ability. These are actors who know the score, playing characters who either know the score, or are completely clueless about what the score is. And can someone please tell me why Josh Brolin was overlooked for an Oscar nomination?
The Coen's have constructed a film that is intensely satisfying on every aspect. After two viewings, all the magnificant parts of the film still have not sunk in. Some may find the violence too gratuitous or the character's too unwholesome, but as the title suggests before you buy the ticket, this is a film about the darkest parts of human nature, winning out over the best parts of it. For those dissatisfied by the film's ending, I put it to you to contact Mr. McCarthy and suggest a better one. One could see Cormac McCarthy reflected in the Sheriff Belle role, only someone who has witnessed such senseless crime could write so vividly of it. Or perhaps not, because the Coen's have long been gifted at dipicting it.
Movie Review: Not Much of A Country For Young Men Either
Summary: 5 Stars
If you've had water cooler chats about NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, you've probably heard it described as "disturbing"--even by people who loved it. I recently re-watched the film with friends (neither of whom has seen it before) one of whom said, "I'm glad I saw it; but I'm sure it's going to give me nightmares." The other just nodded her head in agreement: she was otherwise speechless.
Even the film's detractors have to admit that it packs a wallop. Of course, since it IS the Coen Brothers, you might expect that the amount of blood spilled would be effectively countered by any number of laugh out loud moments. Well, not quite. There IS humor in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, but overall, the film's vision is as bleak as the West Texas landscape it depicts. Like the preceding films in the Coen oeuvre, this movie drips irony, and conventions are subverted right and left. There's much that can be savored intellectually and aesthetically. And then, there's the level of violence, which, frankly, many will find off-putting. And if law officer dealing with all this carnage is the sharp, but world weary Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, natch) and not the smart, funny and life-affirming (and life bearing) Marge Gunderson of their earlier masterpiece FARGO, well, you are missing at least ONE leavening touch.
Of course, neither the Coen Brothers nor any filmmaker should be required to always leave the viewer with that little ray of hope. Whereas in previous films, their vision might have been described as absurd, here the Brothers Coen veer towards the nihilistic. And that will leave a lot of viewers as cold as the film's numerous corpses. They are, of course, adapting the work of novelist Cormac McCarthy, and reportedly did not stray too far from their source work. That may account for a lot.
Filmmakers as original as the Coens do not deal primarily in adaptations, although, in this film, and its immediate predecessor, the re-make of THE LADYKILLERS, we may be seeing something of a reversal of that trend. The brothers have said on many occasions that the source novel was perfect material for them, and I certainly won't dispute that assertion substantially. I will suggest, however, that in films their original screenplays, evildoers are, in the main, quite human and sometimes even oddly sympathetic. The only other film where there seemed to be an implacable evil entity was the **COMEDY** RAISING ARIZONA. And in that film, the embodiment of evil turned out to be quite mortal, after all.
Put simply, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is what it is: the stuff nightmares are made of. Thematically, its themes of happenstance and fate, the futility of our best laid schemes are classic Coen. No earlier film of theirs has ever weighed on me so oppressively as this. But I won't deny its excellence. Whether future films will prove as bleak and (yes) "disturbing" as this one remains to be seen. The fact that they followed it up with the comic BURN BEFORE READING is a sign at least that it won't all be existential angst from here on out.
Not that there's anything WRONG with that.