No Country for Old Men: Movie Review (2008)

Written and directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 123 minutes, rated R.

The modern-day Western "No Country for Old Men" hails from Ethan and Joel Coen, who arm themselves with Cormac McCarthy’s fantastic 2005 book of the same name and deliver one of 2007’s best films in the process.

Working from their own script, the Coens ("Fargo," "Blood Simple") craft a violent, engrossing movie that never telegraphs or condescends; it keeps its twists and its surprises close to its bleeding heart, which is significant because in this movie, that heart is often hemorrhaging.

Though the movie isn’t as bloody as, say, the recent "Sweeney Todd" or "Shoot ’Em Up," its violence also isn’t stylized or played for dark humor, as it is in those films. As such, it comes off as far more authentic and chilling, not to mention intense.

Set in 1980, the film stars Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam veteran hunting one day along the Texas-Mexico border when he comes upon a grisly mass murder in the desert. Strewn around him are dead men and a dead dog, with submachine guns and other weapons littering the area.

Unfazed — the swarming flies and bloated corpses are mere curiosities to this man — Moss picks around the scene until he comes upon a stash of drugs piled high in the back of a truck and, later, $2 million in cash sandwiched within a black case.

Without hesitation, Moss takes the money, leaving behind the only survivor, a dying Mexican crying out for "agua." Back home, Moss let’s his wife (Kelly Macdonald) know that she can now retire before he reveals that he does indeed have a conscience and thus a reason to root for him. In the middle of the night, unable to sleep because he’s thinking about the dying man he left behind, he makes the critical mistake of leaving home and bringing him a bottle of water.

It’s then that everything goes wrong for him.

Working against him, after all, is the formidable psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, perfect), a man who sports a Buster Brown blowout and who obviously has no conscience himself (he kills with a cattle stun gun and the results are as repellent as you’d expect). For reasons best left for the screen, Chigurh decides that Moss is going to pay for stealing that money. He’s going to track Moss down, he’s going to get that money for himself, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

One person who does is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, scoring again after his excellent turn in "In the Valley of Elah"), who completes the film’s deadly triangle by going after Moss and Chigurh.

This superb movie is about the sly weaving of skill and chance that unfolds among them all, with the characters crisscrossing in and out of each other’s reach with such mounting heat, they create a knot onscreen that tightens in your gut.

With its accomplished performances, direction, writing and cinematography, "No Country for Old Men" is a must-see. Ultimately, it’s a movie haunted by what the West was and what the West has become. At its core, the movie knows they aren’t so different, which is what troubles it, and it also knows that nothing will change anytime soon, which is what deepens it.

Grade: A




N I N TE ND 0 W I I