Doesn't feel good, just feels right

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2008)

If it's a Tommy Lee Jones movie, I figure to get my money's worth in entertainment value. "No Country For Old Men" gave me every penny back and some more. It is as though I felt it rather than saw it. Some titles seem added at the last minute--not this one. Ed Tom Bell, Anton Chigurh, Llewelyn Moss, and Ellis are proof that old men have been rendered obsolete and impotent by the violence and emptiness of the culture. Jones plays a man coming to grips with that reality while Bardem and Brolin play men who haven't begun to consider that truth yet. Character after character adds to the grit. Ellis and Carson Wells add some humor and insight, but you know there is no hope for them either. How about a madman who carries a compressed gas cylinder and has a man stand up willingly to take a metal rod to the brain? Even the border crossing felt real. And in the end does the SWAT team show up to save the day? That's not real so it doesn't happen. Who knows what happens to Chigurh as he walks away from the boys arguing about who lost a shirt? That's the feel of reality in a country with no room for old men. This is one of the most satisfying films I have seen in a very long time. The only weak spot was the off-screen death of Moss, but the Chigurh "call it" encounter with the old man at the gas station more than covered the blemish.