Review
No Country for Old Men
- Director
- Ethan Coen
- Joel Coen
- Year
- 2007
- Rating
- Reviewed by
- José Ruiloba a.k.a. Morris
- Review date
- Thursday, February 21, 2008
Hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles onto a stash of money after a drug deal in the border went terribly wrong. Psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) wants the cash and goes after him while Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is looking for both.
Ethan and Joel Coen produced, directed, edited and wrote the movie based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. McCarthy, considered one of the most prominent living writers and a true exponent of the American culture, conceived a novel that was, for many, impossible to adapt to the big screen. But leave it to the Coens to get the job done and you’re certainly in good hands.
No Country for Old Men is filled with memorable dialogue, some memorable scenes and at least one memorable character. But the whole doesn’t add to the sum of its parts. The movie appears to be a simple cat-and-mouse game between a “good” and a “bad” guy, but it tries to reach philosophical heights with the aid of what can be considered the moral center of the story, the Sheriff, and ends up being much ado about nothing. An examination of good versus evil and a character study about the human condition in modern times is what it also tries to be and yes, what it ultimately is, but I didn’t see any deep impact or clear subtext in any of it. At the end of the day it was, for me, a cat-and-mouse game that worked only as a very suspenseful and well-made yarn but nothing more.
Much controversy surrounded the movie’s ending, with most people hating it because it is inconclusive and leaves many threads in the open. I don’t mind any of that but I hated it alright, the reason being that it ends with a couple of sleep-inducing, overlong scenes involving the Sheriff that slow things down to a point in which I only kept looking at my watch.
The good, though, comes in spades. The chase sequences between Chigurh and Moss are downright brilliant, like the best of Hitchcock. I won’t talk about their outcome, but the craftsmanship with which they were shot will leave anyone in awe… and absolutely terrified. Chigurh is an instant classic of a villain; a sick man who is surprisingly faithful to his own set of principles and morals, a fascinating example of the lows a man can reach without even noticing or even caring. That he doesn’t come off as a caricature is due to the talent of everyone who had anything to do with his creation. An unsettling encounter with the owner of a gas station is particularly unforgettable.
From a technical and artistic point of view the movie is an unmitigated success, with cinematographer Roger Deakins at the top of his form. The editing by the Coens (under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes) is also pivotal and truly effective for the most part. Frequent collaborator Carter Burwell was brought in to create an almost inexistent score, most of the movie flows without any incidental music, a bold decision that ultimately pays off.
The cast is uniformly excellent, with Oscar-winning Javier Bardem leading the pack with a chilling, deranged and grounded performance that is difficult to shake off. Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are also good, while supporting performances from Woody Harrelson and Kelly Macdonald are solid across the board.
“Call it.”
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Review
No Country for Old Men
- Director
- Ethan Coen
- Joel Coen
- Year
- 2007
- Rating
- Reviewed by
- Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho
- Review date
- Monday, March 10, 2008
Perhaps it doesn’t help that I never read the basis of the Coen brothers’ script, a novel by Cormac McCarthy whose every reader is sure to praise and which presents so much insight that it earned an instantaneous spot in everybody’s book of great novels of recent times. I have read however that the film is so faithful to the novel and the novel so full of the Coens’ favorite themes that the line between the Coen brothers being inspired by McCarthy and McCarthy being inspired by the Coen brothers is almost blurry. Or at least that’s what everyone wants to believe. The Coens are so distant at times but so brilliant usually that we all struggle to understand their work and like it. I’m a fervent admirer of Fargo since I saw it in 1996, but I know countless people who just don’t get it, and others that say they do but don’t really… Perhaps I was one of them or still am. I can tell anyone what’s great about Fargo, but when I see them still not getting it I wonder if it’s great at all or only in my mind because I always liked it so much and never was too clear about why. If something similar is going in here I’m one of the clueless. But this time I’m older, more mature, and much more experienced, and I can tell you there’s not as much here as there’s in Fargo, and not by a damn sight.
Not that I didn’t like it, and trust me, I wouldn’t care bashing it if I thought it deserved it even though it’s being universally praised. This is a great story realized through outstanding quality in every respect, but aloof when all is said and done. The story is so simple it couldn’t insult itself by just being what it is: a bunch of people after a suitcase containing two million dollars. Just telling that story could bring the film down to being the typical action film where we don’t care about the money but about the shenanigans the characters get involved in to snatch it. I won’t name names of such films because there are many examples and they’re not necessarily bad, but granted: they’re rarely classics. This one attempts an interesting twist: making of it a character study that provokes rare insight into the mind of a soulless criminal by making it the most intriguing role. That’s despite the fact that the criminal in question, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), is a supporting character, though his actions are most closely followed by the plot.
Bardem, the already consecrated Spanish actor, continues his streak of flawless performances as this chilling murderer who flips a coin to decide whether he’ll kill a store clerk, requesting that the clerk call it or else it wouldn’t be fair. His very looks are terrifying but he’s much worse because he’s not deadpan but rather charismatic and full of self-confidence. Everyone begs for their lives telling him that he doesn’t have to do this. He observes with great puzzlement that everyone says that before he plugs them with whatever weapon he’s got at hand, including a captive bolt pistol (usually used to stun cattle). He kills to achieve his means, but also for sport. His conversation with the bewildered clerk is one of the film’s greatest pleasures. It’s pure Coen wit and if it’s really reproduced from the novel it’s amazing. But the timing, the delivery and the unspoken language comes courtesy of the directors, who really know their game.
There’s no music for the most part. The little of it that shows up is by Carter Burwell, the usual collaborator of the Coens whose music I have always loved. This experiment is nothing new, but this is one of the few cases where it is completely successful. That we rarely miss the music speaks of the film’s intensity. There’s no denying that the suspense works. Incidentally, the Coens did the film editing under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.
Much of the praise goes to Bardem’s portrayal of Chigurh and the character in general. Close attention was paid to making him human instead of mechanic like The Terminator. Even inside the film, the other characters praise Chigurh’s procedures as containing an admirable code of ethics. True, his particular ways are most fascinating, but they don’t always seem credible or congruous. Be that as it may, I don’t see why he’s much better than any other great villain in history. If it goes to terrifyingly smooth operators, I’ll take Eve Harrington any day. But people love a cold-blooded killer.
Much less successful is the character of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played as masterfully by Tommy Lee Jones, who essentially does nothing but add some interesting philosophy to the events. He’s after the trail of Chigurh, but never affects what’s going on. I’m certain that in literature this character was essential to the story’s morale. Here he’s out of place.
The main character is welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who originally found the money among several corpses in a quite unsuccessful drug deal, snatched it, and found out that this money could buy nothing but trouble. His interactions with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) and bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), who’s after Chigurh, are fun to watch. Through his undeniable bravura, Brolin makes of Moss a perfectly solid leading man, though for some reason the movie keeps undermining his subplot. It’s like the story keeps going against the flow, resisting convention to create something unusual. To me this was off-putting. Frankly, I would have enjoyed the same story told in a straight way with a lot of Coen brothers’ dialogue and their unmatchable direction. The way it was handled, I couldn’t get the point. And I refuse to keep at it.
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