Coens bringing their A-game

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2007)

Wow, if you want to see some talented filmmakers operating at the top of their game, check this one out. The unusual thing is that, uh, I think one can make a case that they've been operating at the top of their game-well, I suppose it depends on how much you like their work. Certainly I'd say since Fargo; I can't comment on films too much before that because I am not as familiar with their work before that time. Anyway, this film is a cold-eyed, intellectually honest, unshrinking parable of the bleakness of life in the US these days. The film is set in 1980 but its coldness and cynicism would seem to ring true today. It's based on a Cormac McCarthy novel which I must read. As has been widely documented, there is a lot of violence, but also healthy servings of trademark Coen brothers humor. The film is about the aftermath of a drug-smuggling transaction gone wrong and how welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin-in a performance for which he should receive an Oscar nomination and an award would not be out of the question), a hard-eyed, perhaps in over his head Regular Guy who realizes he's very lucky and perhaps also realizes how much trouble he is in, even if he doesn't want to admit it to himself, is caught in the crosshairs of a lunatic bagman (Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in a role to, uh, kill for) who is trying to retrieve the money. Bardem's hair is, as many others have noticed, styled rather ubiquitously. His coldness and focus is identified by Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson, who turns in a fair performance, but whose acting range seems limited) who is hired to attempt to retrieve the money for the other side but whose manner is much more laconic. It is difficult to think of more intense characters than Chigurh in recent movies. His intensity may be a symptom of desperate times, but Chigurh displays some humanity in a scene in which he engages rather more intensely in convenience-store banter than is normal. The inevitability and fury with which Chigurh pursues the money is broken up by his philosophical encounter at an out-of-the- way convenience store.
The Coen brothers keep the plot moving along briskly and they refrain from music which might tip their hands as to how the audience should react. The movie is ultimately a metaphor for a rather fractured and lonely era in the United States and the seeming inevitability of disaster in the film is only broken by random, seemingly insignificant scenes such as a good deed Llewelyn which is thwarted early in the film, and by a scene featuring Tommy Lee Jones (perfectly cast as a world-weary and mystified sheriff, aghast at the untrammeled evil with which he has to deal) as Sheriff Ed Bell and his wife (Tess Harper). Jones also provides narrative framing of the film which sets the tone of horror at the depths to which people have sunk. The Coen brothers really pace the movie beautifully though, enabling it to progress without dwelling excessively on one scene.
As a parable for the modern era, this film cannot be beat. Come Oscar time, it's quite possible that Brolin, Bardem, the Coens, and their breathtaking film, will be honored.