No Country for Action FIlms

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2008)

I don't know if this was the best film of 2007, but it was gimmick-less, thoughtful and absolutely satisfying one. Much of the hits this film seems to take almost completely center on the ending. More than anything, I think that is an audience flaw, not one in the film or the original source material, namely the novel.
No Country for Old Men is a story about many things. The story can be dissected in numerous, and even possibly profound ways. But as any good novelist will do with things such as "context" and "setting," and even "language," as Cormac McCarthy has done, this is all by design of course.
Yes I am being sarcastic. But the point is, the story is what it is. The point isn't the tired cliché of chasing down a bundle of money, its about people. In this case, people who came home from the Vietnam war and in some fashion, brought the war home with them. The story is also, as the title implies, about as Dylan would say, how the times "they are a changing."
So there ends the analytical session.
The Coen's have really found a story made from the ground up for no other filmmakers than themselves. The caper story, qwirky characters and dialog recall just about every Coen Brother's movie in recent memory. Hell, there is even more than a touch of Blood Simple in there.
So If the direction is great, and the characters are there, what about the actors? Well Tommy Lee Jones is as good as he always is playing some old coot from way out yonder. Josh Brolin is convincing in every way possible. But it is Spaniard Javier Bardem that elevates what is just another Coen Caper to Art. Bardem's performance is absolutely unapologetic as the oxygen bottle carrying killer. I don't think there is a single criminal or killer since Arnie in 1984s Terminator, that has this much power and persona.
So this ending. Well I think most modern movie goers have been trained like dogs. They like a big bang at the end, and in my mind the movie delivered it. But the story was never about killers or money to begin with, it was about people and how times moves on, even if people don't. I don't think any shoot out, or handshake could do the movie any more justice than how it ended. Anything else would have been a damned cheat.
No Country for Old Men is a story about the desert. It's a story about greed. It's a story about killing. It's a story about people.
Heck, No Country for Old Men is about so many things, it is a movie that gives the audience something to do both during the movie and long after the credits roll---to think! How 'bout that.
Now there is something you simply cannot make up. I dare you to even try.