No Country for Old Men, a movie review
Most characters are lucky to make it out of a Coen Brothers film alive. For laughs, the brothers run their co-stars’ dead bodies through wood chippers. For yucks, a guy’s hand gets stuck to a window sill with a sharp knife.
It’s dark humor, lost on the average moviegoer, I suppose, but usually funny to those who enjoy it. I’m one of them, so I try to see whatever Joel and Ethan throw at us. We’re the kind of people who appreciate the comic potential of a 9mm slug between the eyes (look, it’s just a movie, all the actors go home without a scratch).
Alas, the “every slit throat is good for a few chuckles” vibe that gave us “Miller’s Crossing” and “Fargo” seems dead and buried in “No Country for Old Men.” The Coens seem to have lost their sense of humor in regards to the inevitability of death. There’s no cheating it, they’re telling us, and the harder you try, the more you hurry it along.
Death stalks the scraggly hills of southwest Texas in the human form of Anton Chigurh, a man with one purpose: to return $2 million in drug money to its rightful owners. Killing anybody who gets in his way is just his quirky way of upholding his exacting professional standards.
Somehow a botched drug deal has turned into a border-country bloodbath. One intrepid (though badly shot-up) Mexican drug runner wanders off with a satchel full of hundred-dollar bills, then dies. About a quarter mile behind him are a half-dozen dusty four-wheel-drive pickups full of yet more shot-dead drug traffickers.
A hunter who can’t shoot straight named Llewelyn Moss happens upon the trucks and their deceased occupants first, then tracks down the guy with the case o’ cash. Right here you want those guys from “Mystery Science 3000″ wisecracking, “cool, he’s from that parallel universe where things go good for the guy when he decides to keep the money.”
Whatever planet Mr. Moss is from, he does defy the common sense handed down by every novel, movie, short story and soap opera episode from the time of Aesop to future media forms as yet uninvented: Keeping the money ruins your life.
As expected, things get increasingly complicated — and violent — for Llewelyn Moss. Death, that is, Mr. Chigurh, is after him with a vengeance you’d think might better be reserved for whoever cures cancer or AIDS.
As cinema, it’s a solid film with strong performances from Josh Brolin (who looks uncannily like his dad) as Moss and Javier Bardem as Chigurh, who carries the trademark Coen Brothers homicidal smirk throughout.
Tommy Lee Jones plays a Texas lawman who should be trying to do something about all the unfolding mayhem, but isn’t. Woody Harrelson is sort of tossed in there for no obvious reason.
The story is based on something by Cormac McCarthy, who writes novels about tough guys who soldier on through ceaseless carnage because, well, soldiering on through ceaseless carnage is just what they do. Against formidable odds — and with a formidable disregard for punctuation — McCarthy’s novels succeed impressively. I’ve read a bunch and liked them all.
His books are usually meditations on the bleak corners of the human character. Not funny, or ironic, or sarcastic. Tough, you might say, like the West itself, where most of his stories unfold.
The Coens, in contrast, make movies about fools and the blood-soaked consequences of their their folly (except for “O Brother Where Art Thou,” which had fools aplenty, but not much blood. It’s my favorite Coen brothers film).
I might need to see the movie again to be sure this coming together of Coens and McCarthy really works. The movie is stylish, beautifully photographed, peppered with authentic-sounding West Texas twang. It has McCarthy’s characteristic rough dudes doing what they must.
For now, though, the movie seems not quite amusing enough for spot in the Coen cannon, and the characters are not quite enduring enough to be authentic McCarthy-esque protagonists.
But if it makes me want to see it twice, “No Country for Old Men” must have something going for it.
(Wow, this pic just won Best Picture).
Tags: , "No Country for Old Men", movie reviews
February 25th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Oh yeah, Tom. See it again. You missed a lot, including the fact that Llewelyn Moss is, in fact, a pretty good shot. Not every large animal drops over dead with the first shot.
But I’m with you about “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” which is also my favorite Coen Brothers film.
“No Country for Old Men” is visual poetry, right up there in Akira Kurosawa territory, and the Coens advance the meaning of the story with visuals. Bravura filmmaking.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Oh, I’m all over the visual poetry, but when I sat down to write what the movie was about, I just couldn’t help thinking what a complete idiot Moss was — if the Coens have taught us anything over the years, it’s that things like this will go badly wrong. I’d love to see a single reference in popular culture where Joe Sixpack gets by with stealing $2 million from ruthless criminals. Joel and Ethan know this. After Fargo this movie is redundant.
I guess it comes down to which metaphor you bring home from the film: I saw the implacable killer as death incarnate. As far as we know nobody gets away with cheating death, which makes the movie a pointless exercise. Why go to so much trouble to make such an obvious point?
Now, another interpretation could be that the implacable killer represents the permanence of evil in human affairs. But here’s the problem: the history of human affairs demonstrates that in the long run good trumps evil (evidence by the fact that there are many, many times more good people than evil ones). “No Country” doesn’t come out that way at all.
Yet another interpretation: the mindless pursuit of wealth looses evil on the world. OK, but still: this is hardly an original observation.
A movie shot with such obvious artistic flair must be making an artistic statement. I didn’t see anything more complicated than the points I’ve just made. When the Coens are on their game they are never so obvious.
Then again, I liked “Big Lebowski” much better the second or third time I saw it. (Missed the “Big Sleep” angle the first time; duh). Maybe this one’s an acquired taste for me.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:51 am
no country for old men is unassumingly clever; tons of unexpected plot twists yet it never goes over the top. well done indeed.