No Country for Old Men
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Movie Reviews of No Country for Old Men
Movie Review: Disturbing, philosophical, oddly beautiful at times: a unique thriller (5- stars)
Summary: 5 Stars
Through sweeping cinematography, excellent dialogue, and distinctive characters, this tale of a man hunted by a sociopath transcends its plot. In the western plains, towns, and cities, a sociopath, Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is in pursuit of a large sum of cash from a drug deal. Unfortunately for retired welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who finds the cash, Chigurh will stop at nothing to get it. The small town sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), who puts together what has happened, wants to get to Llewelyn, and a tracker (Woody Harrelson) hired by a drug lord wants to get to the money, all before the ruthless Chirgurh does, The result is a tense, violent chase at the speed of small town life.
The dialogue is so reminiscent of the Coen brothers' much earlier "Fargo" that it is surprising that much of it derives from a novel by a different writer, although the melding of Coens with Cormac McCarthy makes perfect sense. In particular, the sheriff's exchanges with his deputy (Garrett Dillahunt) and his wife (played with down-to-earth confidence by Tess Harper) give this film its greater context and rhythm as evil is treated with both matter-of-fact acceptance and disbelief. Philosophy is doled out in brief parcels punctuated by pauses.
Tommy Lee Jones has played this kind of character so many times that it is remarkable that he makes each one unique. with its frighteningly is pure evil, though even he lives by a set of rules, as ruthless as those are. Brolin delivers a fine, sympathetic portrait of Llewelyn Moss. And Bardem is simply terrifying with his monotone delivery and largely blank expression.
"No Country for Old Men" is about the unexpected ways evil enters the lives of ordinary people, and the toll it takes on those who try to stop it. Because of the tension throughout, this theme is not clear until the last moments, in an ending that at first seems out-of-place and rushed (the last a valid critique.) Although much of the violence takes place off-screen, you can never tell when it won't, and that gives the impression of a bloody-and-gore film. I find this to be one of the best Coen brother films, although it took several days of thinking about it afterward to realize it.
-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann
Movie Review: A Love For A Good Chase
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to say, my primary love for this movie stems from my love of a good chase. We're not talking about a high-speed Steve McQueen Bullitt chase here. As a child, I've always been electrified by forces that were unstoppable, made only the more ominous by it's slow persistence and insistence. In this movie, the Coen Brothers, matured from their early days of the ultimate chase scene (Raising Arizona), have found the most deadly chase in our lifetime. That force (much like water, rust, or time) embodies itself in Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurr.
Chigurr's slow, logical, and unceasing advance, increasingly closing in on Josh Brolin - who finds a stash of 2 million dollars amidst a drug deal gone bad - is really an allegory of time. Tommy Lee Jones is the sheriff who is quickly becoming an anachronism in an era (1980s) of violent drug dealers and a new wave of criminals. With a wonderful face full of lines, each revealing an American story of the Southwest, Jones is our gentle narrator, creating vast soliloquies from a few strong and silent sentences in conversations with characters he encounters, painting a vision of days gone by, when lawmen didn't need guns. Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald is adorable, playing the trailer park wife with an antiquated softness that has all but disappeared in modern times.
A virtuoso move that displays just how advanced the Coens have come in their craft is the decision to omit gratuitous violence onscreen. When viewers are denied what has become a part of our collective cinema consciousness anyway, we are instructed through storytelling that violence in the real world is mostly random...to the point where the movie camera doesn't even show up on time for some of the biggest bloodletting scenes.
The beautiful light of the Southeast reverberate with visions of Georgia O'Keefe's paintings from New Mexico. I stayed impressed throughout the movie, continually in awe at a film that has everything that is beautiful and lyrical about America. There's been countless Hollywood films that portray American life in impossibly luxurious living dimensions. I'm thankful that the Coen brothers are still around to show that less is infinitely more.
Movie Review: Like Watching a Train Wreck i
Summary: 5 Stars
No Country for Old Men
The Coen brothers are among the more literate writer/producers working today. Using locales as diverse as wintery North Dakota ("Fargo) ) they tell universal stories of alienation and isolation. But in "No Country for Old Men," they have hit on the truly scary theme of amoral, mindless violence. The plot is relatively straightforward: a gang of outlaws gets into a shootout that leaves half a dozen men and animals dead. A drifter (Josh Brolin) wanders across the scene and finds a suitcase stuffed with two million dollars in drug money. He takes off for parts unknown, followed by the killer, Javier Bardem, and later by the Sheriff, Tommy Lee Jones, and finally by a hitman hired by the drug lords.
The serial killer stays one step behind the drifter, following a signal from a transponder hidden in the bag. What happens when the killer employs his weapon of choice, an air-powered cattle gun, is too graphic to retell here.
That might be the end of the story, but there are several layers involved.
The rules of the Old West have been turned on their head, with the lawmen grasping at invisible straws, and the bad guys seemingly beyond the pale of civilization.
This is an extraordinarily good ensemble cast. Tommy Lee Jones is as good as I've ever seen him; Josh Brolin is excellent, and Javier Bardem richly deserved his Oscar for best supporting actor. Even the bit parts are good (the old man who runs the general store and who survives because of a coin toss) The cinematography is as gritty and merciless as the terrain where it was shot. Normally, I put the DVD into "Pause" a couple of times to attend to personal business, but not with this film, which I watched from opening credits until the end, about which I have my own opinion, but won't spoil it here. Other reviewers have said things about the film's "unevenness" but I'm not sure whether those discordant notes are a detriment to the movie.
Years from now, film critics will include "No Country for Old Men" among classics like "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" as one of the greatest westerns.
I give it a five-star review.
Movie Review: An instant classic modern Western
Summary: 5 Stars
This top-notch action thriller's greatest strength is the pulse-pounding scenes where a psychopathic killer named Chigurh (impressively portrayed by a chillingly calm Javier Bardem) forces ordinary people to look death in the face. There's plenty of violence, but lots of suspense as well, and some subtle intrigue as well as a not-so-subtle moral message.
The plot revolves around Nam-Vet Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who finds a suitcase full of money at the site of a drug deal gone bad, and decides to risk taking it. Chigurh (a nasty little bug with a very troublesome bite) is trying to find him (and the money) and doesn't care who gets in his way. Meanwhile, a Texas lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) is trying to track down the source of all the bodies that are turning up. The story rambles here and there, and the directors seem uncertain where to finish the story, so the final minutes are totally unexpected and almost inexplicable, but this is clearly an instant classic of the modern West.
Much of the film is a series of chase sequences wherein the ingenious Moss tries to stay one step ahead of the relentless Chigurh, whose calm detachment makes him seem almost inhuman. Instead of a gun, Chigurh employs a device used to slaughter cattle - an indication of his true mindset. In an exchange with Moss' wife near the end of the film, he reveals an attachment to his own ideals which could almost be considered admirable. Unfortunately, his single-minded pursuit of those ideals leaves no room for compromise with the rest of the world, whose fate is of no concern to him.
After Moss' trusting mother-in-law unwittingly initiates a bloodbath, the somewhat cryptic ending takes us to Jones and a retired sheriff who discuss how much things have changed since their heyday, making the point that their beloved Texas is no country for old men like themselves. But given the amount of carnage that we're shown in the few minutes prior, it doesn't seem like it's much of a country for young men, either. Until all men start to see each other as human beings and not just cattle, the cycle of violence and despair can only continue.
Movie Review: Vengeance is Mine!
Summary: 5 Stars
What bothers many reviewers about this film is precisely that which sets it apart for me. It is true that it denies us much of what we have come to expect from the standard study of morality. We are denied the longed-for show-down between good ( Sherriff Ed Tom Bell) and depravity (Chigurh ), denied the shoot-out (between Llewellen and Chigurh ), denied the retribution of evil in any overt way. This is no country for old cliche's.
And yet. We are given hints. Hints that there is a system of justice which operates despite the hopelessness so barrenly expressed by Sherriff Ed Tom Bell. But it operates covertly, irresistibly, to the extent that even the most calculating, self-contained psychopath cannot escape its reach; Chigurh, arrogantly, dismissively leaving the scene of his latest(last?) hit (Carla Jean) is arbitrarily flicked of his perch by two boys innocently goofing around on their cycles. This crucially distracts him and plunges him headlong into the utter violence of a motor-car collision, grievously injuring him. Like one of his own victims (Llewelyn ), he is reduced to barter for an item of clothing (to make a sling) to make good his escape. His fate is clearly implied.
This surely is how we all know the world of morality; We never see justice as we would like it, our sense of vengeance is always somehow left unsatisfied. (Hitler's demise is hidden from our eyes, Stalin dies a venerated figure, Bin Laden, like Jack the Ripper always seems to elude our grasp. And nobody ever seems to put the rude waiter in his place.) But the strength of the film is to suggest, for those who have eyes to see, that vengeance, although not ours, operates on a level so refined and subtle that it always takes us unawares. In this sense the film is realistic in the best, profound sense of the word. It brings about a sense of both the horror of evil, and the inescapable retribution thereof, which speaks of another reality, of a transcendent Justice in much the same way that Dostoyevsky did in Crime and Punishment. For any film to be mentioned in the same breath as this book says it all.