No Country for Old (X) Men

Rating: 10/10 (6 March 2017)

The Rover, No Country for Old Men and The Dark Knight in one movie.
The clichés of hardcore contemporary movies empty whiskey bottles, dim roach motels, beater cars ran to the ground on desolate highways and a tonne of bloodshed never die and never fail to tell the tale.
Oh, but this is a superhero movie, right?
We've been provided with X-Men movies preceding this one to give it an implied background that splendidly gave the opportunity to limit the 'm' word and the beaten-to-death 'Yer one of them!' lines that we already are aware of. This is a gritty change of pace from the happy-go-lucky-leotard-and-cape hero tales to a brutal, tough life on the run for a man... who happens to have claws.
Heath Ledger, Margot Robbie, Hugh Jackman. So far Australians in superhero movies are 3 for 3. They are so good at it.
Combine them with a British co-star (as was done in two out of these three) who also leave nothing on the table by way of acting, and you can't go wrong with the chemistry. No, they're not dad and son but by nuance you can see how annoyed they get with each other and how no matter what they will never leave each other's side.
The Dark Knight set the standard for the morbid realism superhero movie genre.
After this movie I'm not sure if it can be set any higher if any movie can even meet it now.
I used to help my parents at a care facility.
How far does this movie go in humanizing these characters we've come to know over the years and contrast the poised, answers-to-every-problem pure image with what just might happen if a person with special abilities starts to deteriorate?
Patrick Stewart's performance is so good it made me look up Star Trek t- shirts. No joke.
Around every turn of the movie is one clever approach after another. Mutants aren't real but if they WERE this is what it would look like. When something isn't right it isn't stated. We just see it and it is done so artistically that even those completely unfamiliar with the comic won't go "What's happening?" and there is no attempt made to go out of the way to explain it.
This is not about a dude floating around wearing his underwear on the outside of his pants and rescuing cats stuck in trees, saving people from burning buildings or stopping a man who just snatched a lady's purse
It's darkness, darkness.
The days of a pristine mansion "school for the gifted,' suit-and-tie comfort in technology and always seeing the good in everyone become a vague memory if we can even remember it at all.
The movie seems to take Chuck's rose-colored optimism for humanity and thoroughly flush it down a toilet, suggesting he may have been just an old fool and now actually in his "true" form after life's illusions play out and have ran out... but think carefully after you've seen the movie.
One final note just for fun
Once again we hear Johnny Cash's "When the Man Comes Around," featured almost 20 years ago in The Hunted, a movie that I think lead to making No Country for Old Men since it featured Tommy Lee Jones and another Spanish-speaking actor in Javier Bardem, and The Hunted featured a similar style of violence.
When I first saw the previews for this movie with no lines featured... just dark single-key piano notes and the professor in the back of a car looking nothing besides destitute and the simple title "Logan," I KNEW this would be the 5th movie I would see by myself.
I had to see it. You need to see it.