Stylish And Arresting Drug Payola Crime Thriller From Master Filmmakers

Rating: 6/10 (9 March 2008)

In West Texas in 1980, Llewelyn Moss comes into possession of a case full of money after he happens on a drug deal gone bad. He goes on the lam, but is soon being pursued by both the County Sheriff and a dangerous killer named Chigurh. Can he make it ?
This is the Coens' Big Ticket - it recently won Best Picture, Best Directors, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor Oscars - and it's one of their better films after the rather lightweight Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, although it's still not a patch on their early quintet of masterpieces. What I like best about it are the heart-pumping action sequences and especially its stalwart refusal to play the action conventionally. We never see the standard shootout where Moss dies, but come across it after it's happened, and we're never entirely sure about Chigurh's actions. He's a peerless psycho in the tradition of Michael Myers in Halloween or John Ryder in The Hitcher - he seems to be able to be almost everywhere at once, following a logical method only he can appreciate. It's nail-biting stuff, but it's also a little confusing at times; what is Chigurh's connection to the Mexican drug-runners exactly, and why is he not there when the Sheriff returns to the motel room and we see a shot of him crouched inside ? Another original touch is that Jones is essentially unrelated to the story - he is constantly assessing the aftermath of the action and bemoaning the direction of society, but he doesn't really affect the plot. A Texas lawman who would rather not carry a gun and fears a coming age of psychopathic killers and druglords is nothing if not original. The cast are all strong, with plaudits to Brolin as the sharp cowboy who can't believe he's missed a trick and Spanish actor Bardem as the contemplative, slow-moving killer. The photography of the beautifully lonely New Mexico desert locations is wonderful, and, as ever, Carter Burwell provides a haunting minimal score. This movie has echoes of others, notably the Coens' own debut, Blood Simple (another shoot-'em-up in Texas) and their friend Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (another guy-finds-a-pile-of-money thriller) and deliberately feels like some early eighties flick (The Border, say) but has plenty of authenticity and wit of its own. A great duck-you-sucker crime thriller, based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy.