You know how this is going to end?

Rating: 9/10 (15 November 2013)

The film's poster is both captivating and dark to the extent that each face represents a hardened entity within its own representation. With the face of Tommy Lee Jones in his always wise and powerful presence, comes the wisdom of a warrior who seeks justice in a world filled with malice and destruction. Brolin's face gives a similar feeling, with some wisdom, but stubborn determination. Bardem's face is haunting and yet intriguing, as it gives off the feeling of incomprehensible force beyond human conception, and that is exactly what his character Anton Chigurh stands as. In their first attempt, and it is a successful one indeed, the Coen's have delivered a faithful and brutal depiction of Cormac McCarthy's book of the same name, as they return to the darker psychological roots that first spawned their Neo Noir debut, Blood Simple. No Country for Old Men although dawned with the usual Coen Brother's humor, has very little hope to go on as it borders around a world that McCarthy knows all too well, apathetic, deteriorating ,and absent of God.
Through the calm, but tired out narration of Jone's Sheriff Bell, we are introduced to the wasteland he believes West Texas has become. In his father's time, police officers never carried a gun. They didn't need to, and in fact back then people use to address one another as Sir or Madam. Bell draws his sorrow and uncertainty from a world that is slowly changing, and becoming more deprived of the integrity his father, his grandfather, and their father's believed in when they sought to uphold the law. Aside from a barren dry wilderness, morality has forsaken the land that the wise lawman can't understand the cruelty and the indifference of this jungle as murder, rape, and sadism keep coming and going as if they were cherished past times. Bell's contemplation of this indifferent universe further comes at the revelation of his latest endeavor, as he searches for justice, despite what little faith he holds for the concept.
Upon the sight of drug deal gone wrong, Lewlyn Moss (Brolin), a Vietnam vet, with little to say, takes a case of two million. After a mild and sarcastic conversation with his spunky wife, Carla Jean (Macdonald) he returns to the sight of the crime. Little does he know that his little scavenger hunt has set him in the sights of hit man Anton Chigurh (Bardem). Chigurh, or sugar, to humor Moss's Sarcasm, comes off as vastly different than the more typical movie villain. His insanity and his cunning patience are not anything new to bask in the captivating performance Javier Bardem gives in this Machiavellian entity. With Anton's dreading eyes and the cryptic language Bardem captures a haunting and mysterious presence, beyond his own dark nature. Critics along with an assortment of scholars have praised this character in their interpretation, delineating on his persona, labeling Chigurh as the devil, the grim reaper, an agent of God, and many other forces that represent an unstoppable force of judgment. There is one scene where Anton confronts a store clerk with a coin toss after hearing him make a stupid and ignorant remark. Chigurh tells him to call heads or tails, saying that only he has the right to, and when asked what's at stake, his only answer is "Everything". After the coin lands on heads, Chigurh cynically congratulates what might have been his next victim, but due to fate he feels an even greater desire to abide by the laws of chance, than to slaughter mindlessly. It could be said that he is neither man nor monster, thus making it difficult for him to be killed, despite Lewyln's resourcefulness.
In the course of this film, as the cat and mouse game between Moss and Chigurh plays out with brutal bloodshed on both sides, Sheriff Bell tracks Moss, encountering one clue after another, finding very little truth if any in this enigmatic game of good and evil. The film's ending, not to give any spoilers, is neither about resolution nor despair, as little of the film offers hope, it is more of an insight towards humankind's struggle for survival, and comprehension. In our post 9/11 world, our hostility has grown drastically to the point where our own outlooks on morality has constantly been re-evaluated. Torture has been used as a means of acquiring information, and war has been given a religious manner of patriotism, deluding the masses into believing that our enemies are not human, but subhuman. The Coen brothers present these questions in the post-Vietnam era, mostly through the existential perplex ion Bell contemplates, and the tactical survival skills of Moss and Chigurh. The characters in No Country for Old Men carry with them a uniqueness that grants them a greater intuition into the world they inhabit, thus transcending the more oddly comedic aspects you see in a character within a Coen Brother's film.
No Country for Old Men, as a thriller, and as an examination into the human condition is horrifying, yet equally intriguing within its presentation. It explores an ever changing world, as people become more violent and more hostile within their desire to survive, by whatever means, motives, or for what they justify as reasons. Several quotes by a former deputy played by Barry Corbin sums up for Bell all that we can ever expect in a world where the question of God's existence, although mysterious, seems meaningless at this point. "What you got, ain't nothing new. You can't stop what's coming." It seems that we've reached a point where words as such can no longer hit us like a lightning bolt. Our immunity is due to the very violence we've become accustomed to, and the very hope we have lost in the world that as we grow older becomes more and more alien to us.