No Country for Old Men
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Movie Reviews of No Country for Old Men
Movie Review: Tear A Hole in Hollywood
Summary: 5 Stars
There are 723 (or so) other reviews; thus I won't bore you with another generalized plot summary.
It's a profound film; not only because of what it has in it, or the way the plot shifts, but in its presentation. In its presentation, it tears a divide between truly remarkable films and standard hollywood action flicks. It does so by showing how amazing a film can be WITHOUT the sensationalism, overkill, and cliche. This Hollywood Action sensory overload has made many US films unable to tell a decent, unpredictable story; wading in a kiddie pool of mediocrity.
It's realistic. Yes, it is a violent film, however, the directors knew well enough that once the nature of the main violent character is exposed, then the rest is overkill. As a result, about four of Chigurh's murders are implied, but cut out of the scenes. I was impressed with the ingenuity of the two main characters -- in their weaponry, in their creative survival skills, and being able to improvise themselves into and out of situations. The wounds they received were realistic, and Chigurh's self-treatment of a gunshot wound to the leg further cemented his position as a knowledgable badass. But more importantly, that the directors show this treatment helps in furthering the viewer's understanding of the characters, and their ruthless ambition.
Cinematography is exceptional. Natural lighting is used throughout, and the situational atmospherics are never convenient coincidences that benefit the position of any one character. If anything, they speak more so to the true difficulties one would need to improvise themselves through, since many natural unanticipated factors become part of the plot. Additionally, some of the best parts of the movie are the (seemingly) very simply dialogue sections, that also help you identify with characters.
One of the things that made the end of "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" so remarkable is the complete silence at the end of the film. After the suffocation of Nicholson's character by the native American, the native escapes the hospital and there is no music to tell you how to feel or interpret that outcome. No Country is very similar, in that the only music I remember hearing was a mariachi band (who were actually in the film performing), or radios playing as part of the setting. I like that. I like that the directors aren't figuring ways to intensify scenes via sensory overkill. I like not having to try to decipher what a character is saying between overly-loud edgy metal guitar riffs or techno beats during a chase scene. I'm sick of having to turn the volume down, because the sound engineers figure that if the volume suddenly increases by 60 decibels, it will add to the excitement. And also, there's almost no yelling in the film. No yelling, no expletives. Not that I'm against it, but it sure is a refreshing opposition to all the flashy behavior, over-produced sound and video effects, which have become such a big part of the mainstream.
Movie Review: There is no hope in history
Summary: 5 Stars
This film makes Cormac MacCarthy's style ten times more powerful because it provides the words and metaphors with images that are slowly unwrapped and disentangled from the unbearable reality of life. The USA have reached a point when history is the only master of the game, master of ceremonies. The USA have produced a situation that will resolve itself by using its own contradictions till the whole world is destroyed if necessary. This world is dominated by money that has to be easy and does not have to be clean, even would I say that is to be dirty: that gives it more taste and flavor. The world is dominated by the hunger of overstuffed men for anything that will satiate this hunger with something unreal, surreal, over-real: let it be a powder, an injection or whatever but let it erase the darkness of the night, even in the middle of the day, and cultivate some kind of visionary illusion. Then add the third dimension of this world seen through the distorting glass of the USA: violence not for the sake of making anyone suffer. That is no longer funny. Torturing is the pleasure of the simple minded. We are dealing here with a totally psychotic and asocial schizophrenic who can only find his satisfaction, his fun, his pleasure in imposing death in the cleanest way possible. And if a bullet does not suffice let's have a second to prevent any useless suffering. The USA in their immense hunger for money and drugs, speculation and hunger, accumulation and greed, have attracted on to themselves the worst killers ever, the worst predators ever, the worst rotten-meat-eaters you can imagine. They prosper on manure that they distillate in their speculative bank practices. They thrive on human garbage they concentrate in their appropriative confiscation of all they see and cannot accept not to have. Some try to play cat and mouse with them but these are not the cat and the cat knows it and the cat cannot accept any escape. The sheriff though will survive because he will realize the vulture is wounded less than two yards from him and he the lawman will walk away without confronting him. He will resign due to his cowardice and he will dream his father in a typical posture of the Trail of Tears celebrating the end of the Indian genocide, but carrying a horn full of fire as if Satan did not have any matches. No hope for the average American who wishes to have eternal life in this world without death and perfect innocence in a time when even new-born babies are soiled with the grossest crimes and desires imaginable. A hairless teenager at the end will find five hundred dollars kind of not enough for a five dollar Wal Mart shirt sold to the hyena who disappears when no survivor is any longer blocking his way. Pure darkness in which black finds darker shades of black to even make the absence of any light seem to be too light still to be realistic.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Movie Review: A crime drama, a thriller, a modern day western and a character study.
Summary: 5 Stars
In the early 1980s, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) a poor working class man goes out hunting in the south Texas desert and comes across the aftermath of a shootout. It turns out to be a drug deal gone bad, complete with dead Mexicans, a pickup truck loaded with drugs and a satchel with two million dollars in cash. He takes the satchel unaware that he will now be tracked by an absolutely relentless and merciless psychopath with an air gun named Chigurh (Javier Bardem.) The cat and mouse chase between the two are what makes up the bulk of the film. However the heart and theme of the movie lies with the sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) who is also on their trail. He's an aging lawman who doesn't understand the new kind of brutal violence that's occurring due to the escalating drug wars along the US/Mexican border.
There are moments of nail-biting tension throughout the film reminiscent of the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock and the westerns of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah. The writing of the Coen brothers is as usual brilliant (EDIT: though much of the dialogue is verbatim from Cormac McCarthy's novel) and has a timing and a style with the way that real people in these types of situations would probably talk. Particularly interesting is a scene at a remote gas station between Chigurh and the cashier/owner. The film is intense, bleak, very violent and much darker than even other Coen brother's films like "Fargo."
**SPOILERS** The storyline may put some people off as it does not have the standard ending that one would expect from a crime drama. But then again this really isn't a crime/action movie. The film is a character study and the satchel of money is merely what brings all the characters in conflict with one another. The film especially struck a chord with me and my own feelings of alienation as it opens with a voiceover which emphasizes that there are people who are so cruel that they will go out of their way to hurt others even when it presents absolutely no benefit to themselves. There are people who are so inhuman that although they may not be murderers like the Chigurh character, they actually have more in common with him than they'd be comfortable with or that they're willing to admit.
The film's theme about alienation is shown mostly from the perspective of the Sheriff. When one examines his character and the seemingly random ending regarding what ultimately happens with the money and all involved it does make sense in the context of the film's message. The Chigurh character represents the new wave of senseless violence that haunts the Sheriff. He's getting older and sees the world degenerating all around him. He can't comprehend it and is no longer young enough to effectively cope with it as a police officer.
"No Country for Old Men" is an unconventional film even for the Coen brothers but it's brilliantly executed and destined to be an American classic.
Movie Review: Best of the Year - Read This and You'll See Why
Summary: 5 Stars
The Coen brothers have done it again. Even a mediocre Coen film, such as "The Ladykillers" or "Intolerable Cruelty" is above-average, always impeccably shot, directed and acted. When they fire on all cylinders though, they are unbeatable. Such were the cases with "Miller's Crossing", the best film of 1990; "Fargo", the best film of 1997; and now "No Country for Old Men", the best film of 2007.
Based on prolific writer Cormac McCarthy's transcendent novel, the film, like its source, is a meditation on good vs. evil, masqueraded as a thriller. It is told in a brutal, laconic style that is uncompromising in its intensity.
A man (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a couple of dead bodies while hunting out in the Texan desert. They all have bullet-holes, guns; he finds drugs, which leads him to finding the money as well. A lot of money. More than enough to make sure he and his wife (Kelly McDonald) can get the hell out of their trailer. The only problem is, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), the personification of all senseless evil, is on his trail. And on Chigurh's trail is an honest sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), as well as a sleazy bounty hunter (Woody Harrelson).
All the actors shine, particularly Bardem. The scenes where he asks his victims to flip a coin to determine whether or not he kills them are electric. There is nothing in his dark eyes, no soul, no remnants of human feeling... Chigurh is a merciless creature, functioning purely on a 'kill-or-be-killed' basis. Life means nothing to him, perhaps not even his own.
While Javier Bardem owns the screen, the rest of the cast is uniformly excellent. Josh Brolin mesmerizes with his intensity in an almost-speechless role. Woody Harrelson's part is small, albeit memorable. And Tommy Lee Jones, a true screen veteran, holds his own as the ageing sheriff who confronts his helplessness against contemporary evil, evil that has no reasoning beyond the flip of a coin. He's seen it all, and yet he still wonders why. The experience is in his wrinkly eyes.
The Coen brothers sure keep the pace going throughout the film. The suspense is unbearable. There are sequences of such intensity they will make your rip off the edge of your seats from clutching them so tight. But then there is also unexpected lyricism, as when genuinely good - maybe flawed in their own ways, but at least human - folk encounter the unspeakable terror that is Anton Chigurh, or when the sheriff contemplates the futility of their efforts against something bigger, more powerful than they could ever handle.
"No Country for Old Men" is seemingly simple but rather existential - it sneaks up on you, instead of hammering its messages into your head. It's the best kind of morality play. Like with their own "Fargo", the Coen's have made a film-lover's paradise.
Movie Review: As Simple as a Greek Tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
We occasionally have the feeling that a Coen brothers film is an elaborate in-joke that they are playing on everyone else but each other - not so with this spare, grim and visually dazzling story. Let me say also that I do not know the book it was based on, and am not particularly a fan of thrillers or choreographed movie violence, but "No Country for Old Men" drew me in from the start. The plot is as simple one of those ancient Greek dramas, of hubris and judgment, of human archetypes, of evil, honor and redemption, and black dark humor.
Out hunting in the west Texas desert, one blistering hot day in 1980, good ol' boy Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) comes across the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone horribly wrong; dead bodies of men and dogs, abandoned cars and guns... and 2 million dollars. Llewellyn, a partly-employed welder and Vietnam veteran, lives in a trailer park with his young wife. Why not take the money? Who would ever know? But it soon appears that someone does know that he has a case full of cash, - and he wants it back and Llewellyn Moss dead. That would be Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem); a sociopath with a faultlessly polite manner, right up until the time he casually executes his victims with a air-driven cattle-killing bolt gun. Following Chigurh is the wry and weary Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and for the rest of the movie, the three of them pursue each other, back and across the border, circling tighter and tighter around each other and the satchel full of money - but almost never appearing in the same frame.
Practically nothing that happens in this movie is telegraphed beforehand; there are not even any musical cues. In fact there is hardly any music at all. The violence is curiously understated; sometimes it happens off screen, or is only implied. Mostly we are faced with the aftermath; one of the most unsettling sequences is of Chigurh performing rough surgery upon himself in a cheap hotel room. The sense of place is unerring; yes, this is what west Texas looks like; the desert and the rivers, the little stores next to the gas pumps along the highway, the café and the small-town business block. In fact, they are so little changed that my daughter and I did not realize that the story was set in 1980 until quite a good ways into the movie. Aside from no one using a cell phone, and driving junky old cars, we would never have guessed at all that it was not a contemporary setting.
There are only three bonus features: a collection of interviews with the actors and technicians about working with the Coen brothers, a "Making of " feature and a close-up called "Diary of a Country Sheriff" - all of which run together indistinguishably, but still offer some interesting background to the main feature.