Almost better than blood simple

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2008)

"No country for old men" reminded me much of "Blood simple". The same kind of inevitable violence and brutality. All blood and gore driven by the personalities.
With "No country..." you get the same feeling! The philosophical approach of the killer adds something new, something pretty interesting. He let's a guy at a gasoline station toss a coin. Everyone knows, if the clerk loses, he's going to die. The clerk is a lucky man. And then, this quote as the clerk is about to put the coin into his purse: "Don't put it there, you couldn't tell, it's a special coin..." Whaow, how beautiful! The killer's story keeps with this momentum. That would have ended up with 10 out of 10 points.
So where did the Coens loose 3 points?
Tommy Lee Jones plays a character of an old sheriff. Actually this guy starts to die, while the story unfolds. That means, we're watching a movie about a psychopathic killer, and suddenly a main character of the story starts telling us something about dying of old age.
I have only seen one movie that could handle something like that: "Il Gattopardo" In this classic death, decay and dying is introduced silently, naturally and convincing. One can feel Lancaster (Gattopardo) dying.
I felt that "No country for old men" tried to reach the same effect. But, sorry to say, the Coen's aren't as good as Visconti in this aspect. They fail! So we are left with a pretty good killer story, however not reaching the quality of "Blood simple" (more straight forward) or "Il Gattopardo" (more deep and convincing) Still, it is a very good film!