A Career Best for the Coens, and the Scariest Oscar Nominee Since SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2008)

The Coen Brothers turn back to crime in their stark, stunning, justifiably Oscar-nominated adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (NCfOM). There's a Sam Peckinpah feel to this gripping 1980-set thriller. It's a morality play and a tense suspense story rolled into one  the leaner, meaner, more vicious brother of the Coens' previous great thrillers BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO.
NCfOM's protagonist is Vietnam vet Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin in a brooding, laconic, star-making performance), who goes hunting near the Rio Grande and finds himself embroiled in nightmarish mayhem and violence, Texas prairie style. Instead of bagging wild game, Llewellyn bags $2 million in drug money after stumbling across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, complete with corpses, even a dead dog. (It's chilling to see the bodies in the process of decaying as others happen upon the scene over the course of the movie.) Llewellyn thinks he can just take off with the money, dodge whoever might come after it, and live happily ever after with his sweet wife Carla Jean (played with a letter-perfect Texas accent by winsome Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald. Brolin and Macdonald make a wryly endearing couple. The rare times Llewellyn smiles, it's usually when he's talking with Carla Jean). To his peril, Llewellyn doesn't figure on being pursued by the likes of murderous bounty hunter Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a mysterious figure with a pneumatic cattle gun, a penchant for using a coin toss to decide whether someone should live or die, and a voice that sounds like it's coming not from a human being, but from the bowels of Hell itself. Chigurh relentlessly pursues the equally dogged Llewellyn through Texas as the compassionate, sad-eyed Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones as the film's voice of reason) tries to catch up, feeling overmatched by the sheer implacable evil of the "ghost" that is Chigurh.
The film's pacing is deliberate, but for me that simply increased the suspense as I wondered what Chigurh would do next and if Llewellyn had a chance in hell of eluding him for good, especially with his ever-increasing number of injuries. The suspense scenes are real nail-biters. There's a thrilling chase with Llewellyn pursued at night, first by a monster truck, then into the rapids by dogs. Pit bulls don't stand a chance against bullets! :-) One of my favorite scenes finds Llewellyn in his motel room in the dark. The only lights are the glowing tracking transmitter he finds in the drug money and the light under the door from the hall outside -- until a pair of feet appear on the hall side. All we hear is the transmitter...and the sound of a light bulb in the hall being unscrewed, resulting in more darkness...and I can say no more!
It's a tribute to the power of Bardem's portrayal of Chigurh that his unflattering Beatles moptop-cum-Prince Valiant pageboy haircut doesn't stop him from being one of the most terrifying villains in movie history. It got so that every time Chigurh showed up, I'd watch the rest of the scene between the fingers covering my face, because I knew Bad Things Were About To Happen. Bardem's Chigurh is all the scarier because he can seem utterly calm and casual even as he blows people's brains out with that pneumatic cattle gun of his. The thing can blow out locks as well as brains, so its versatility makes up for its cumbersomeness. :-) As good as all of this year's Best Supporting Actor nominees are, I'm rooting hardest for Bardem to win the Oscar.
There's some humor in the dialogue (taken mostly from the novel), but it's of the low-key, matter-of-fact variety. My favorite is the exchange between the deputy and Sheriff Bell: "It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?" "If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here." My favorite black-humored sight gag: after Chigurh launches a protracted attack in which a cop is killed, the camera pulls back to show that the floor is completely covered with scuff marks from the dead man's shoes flailing and scraping against the floor during the struggle.
Be warned, NCfOM is not for the squeamish or for those who like their endings neat and tidy, with everyone getting what they deserve. Nevertheless, it still haunts me, to the point where I happily paid to see it in a theater for a second time (with relatives who were as blown away by it as I was). Could NCfOM end up being the bloodiest, most suspenseful Best Picture Oscar winner since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS? I feel that NCfOM is not only one of the best films of 2007, but one of the best films the Coens have ever made, richly deserving its 8 Oscar nominations. It's still playing in theaters as of this writing, so by all means, get out of the house and into a theater to see it for yourself!