A sheep in wolf's clothing

Rating: 9/10 (22 December 2007)

"I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand." NO COUNTRY is a powerful film about the consequences met by a man whose reach exceeds his understanding. More broadly the film seems to ponder how we choose to function in a world that we discover to be less predictable than we think it ought to be. Basically, how and why do we embrace conventional wisdom in a world that's proves itself so unconventional? I stole most of that line from Built To Spill, but I think it works. A misconception about NO COUNTRY is that it is an action movie. The assumption is fair considering how the film is marketed but it's really an unfair label. The film is a literary drama that incorporates a lot of violence. This violence is used exclusively to disturb the viewer and never to arouse or incite any cheers for the protagonist. The violence that chases Llewellyn Moss across Texas is relentless and though he manages to evade it temporarily he selfishly places many others in its path. He is not a romantic hero, and is therefore not treated as such by the filmmakers. He is a simple man who is not as powerful as he believes he is. He is 'over matched', to quote the film, and pays for his 'vanity' in a fitting manner. Many I think will have a problem with the way the film side steps any sort of climactic confrontation, but this is not a story of two warring parties. It is the hunter and the hunted; the catalyst and the inevitable consequence(s). That the film deviates from more predictable genre formulas makes it, in my opinion, all the more interesting. This may be a dumb analogy but I think the film is kind of a sheep in wolf's clothing; a grim, pessimistic sheep, yes, but nonetheless impressive and provoking if you can get past the vicious exterior. It is hard to shake a film like NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and I don't intend to. It is worth seeing, remembering, and revisiting. Be prepared to get a bit sad though.