No Country For Hackneyed Filmmakers

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 2007)

Though a simple plot outline of the Coen Brothers' new film, based on Cormac McCarthy's spellbinding novel, sounds like a thousand others you've heard before (guy stumbles upon briefcase full of money, keeps it, is hunted by men with guns who will stop at nothing to get the money back), NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN stands out as the best film I've seen this year. It's also one of the most exciting films in years, and will go down in history as one of the few cinematic masterpieces of the new millennium's first decade.
Here's why: It's made clear within the first few minutes that nothing in this film is safe, and no character will be held in the delicate care of the filmmaker's protective hand. Once this is established, viewers are suddenly lost at sea in dangerous waters, no longer able to rely on past viewings of traditional thrillers, westerns and horror films--all genres from which NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN draws its influence--to prepare themselves for what is traditionally supposed to happen next. It's a wonderful and thrilling sensation. The people in this film must rely on their wits and their plain dumb luck to survive, both of which, the film seems to suggest, will eventually run out for just about everyone. There's a feeling here that the director is at the mercy of actual events, constantly struggling to keep up as the story unfolds in ways that surprise and frighten even him. And the film IS frightening. One of my favorite chilling scenes takes place when Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds himself chased onto the deserted main street of a small Texas town in the middle of the night. Though his life is being threatened in the very center of town, there is nobody he can turn to for help.
Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and Kelly Macdonald are all excellent in the film's key roles, and a number of terrific bit parts played by actors of various shapes and sizes help paint a convincing, sometimes humorous picture of rural Texas in the early 1980s. But it's Javier Bardem's menacing turn as Anton Chigurh that sits at the center of the film. At once soft-spoken and polite, bullying and ruthless, Bardem plays Anton as equal parts Michael Meyers, Buster Keaton, The Joker and Sonny Bono. There have been few villains in cinema that can compare.
There will be people who will dislike this film, of course, precisely because it does confound expectations that have made audiences feel comfortable and complacent throughout the years. Others may find the story unrealistic or too far over-the-top. But as Tommy Lee Jones' Sheriff Ed Tom Bell says, just open the local newspaper and read what sorts of horrors are taking place in this country every day. You'd hardly be able to make this stuff up and be believed.