A Minor American Classic, Friendo

Rating: 9/10 (2 December 2007)

"No Country for Old Men," the Coen brothers' screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's nailbiter of a novel, is doggedly faithful to its source, which will please fans of the book, but which is also what limits it from achieving greatness. As it is, the movie will probably and deservedly be remembered as a minor classic, but that's due more to its execution than it is its subject matter. It's as accomplished as "Fargo," still the Coens' best movie in my opinion, but it doesn't carry a powerful message the way that film did, or have any characters who make a lasting impression.
Josh Brolin plays a Vietnam veteran living in Texas sometime in the early 1980s who comes across a satchel of money ($2 million to be exact) at the scene of a drug deal gone bad. He takes off with it, his arrogance leading him to believe that he will be able to outsmart whoever comes looking for it. Who comes looking for it is Anton Chigurgh, a relentless psycho who's as untraceable as he is unstoppable (played by Javier Bardem). Tommy Lee Jones plays sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who provides the film with a voice over narration in which he laments the state of the world and the awful nature of crime in his day as compared to those of his dad and granddad, both sheriffs before him. In McCarthy's novel, all of this is told in clipped and deadly serious language, and it all feels more full of philosophical import than it is; it's not until you've put the book down and start thinking about it that you realize how lightweight it is. I was interested to see if the Coens would bring any depth to the material that wasn't inherently there. They don't. Therefore, the movie is supremely engrossing and suspenseful, and I hung on every scene and image they put on the screen, but it didn't feel like an important movie to me. On the other hand, who says that every movie has to be important?
The Coens bring some of their trademark ghoulish humor to the film, which was welcome, because I thought McCarthy could have lightened up a bit himself in the novel. The film feels oddly unemotional, mostly because all of the principal action revolves around characters who aren't remotely sympathetic (including Brolin's, who's a bit of a jerk really, when you think about it). The warmest character in the film is Brolin's wife, played in a lovely performance by the Scottish actress Kelly McDonald, but her part is tiny, and the character herself has little to do other than look perplexed or suspicious. I thought Bardem lacked the menace necessary to pull off Chigurgh, who's more of a supernatural representation of evil than a real character; I couldn't help but think what Benicio Del Toro could have done with the role. And Woody Harrelson pops up miscast as a hit-man, in a role as pointless in the movie as it is in the book.
But again, all of these weaknesses were things the Coens inherited from the source material. They've made the best movie possible of McCarthy's novel, and "No Country for Old Men" easily joins "Fargo," "Blood Simple," "Miller's Crossing," and "The Man Who Wasn't There" at the top of their canon.
Grade: A