Lean, mean adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel

Rating: 9/10 (17 May 2008)

The way the last quarter of so of this movie was cut makes me wonder, who did the cutting and what was the rush? We see Llewelyn dead but we don't see him die. We can presume the money went to Mexican drug dealers but we don't see that happen. Or--because Chigurh gives the kid a hundred dollar bill for his shirt--maybe HE got the money. Whether Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) is still alive as Chigurh walks out the door is unclear—intentionally unclear since the psychopathic fatalist gave her a coin flip. However she wouldn't let Chigurh avoid responsibility for her death by calling the coin flip. What's a madman to do? We never find out. Or—since we see Chigurh checking the bottoms of his boots for something (blood?) as he leaves her place—maybe he did kill her.
I wasn't keeping count but Chigurh wantonly killed somewhere around a dozen people, mostly just because he could. I think this kind of character--a psychopath with a code (you harm, insult or even inconvenience me and you die)--plays well in this age of violence in which we live.
Don't misunderstand me. This is a riveting flick, as one would expect from Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. The acting, especially by Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin is superlative. Bardem, with the thick pageboy hairdo and the big malevolent eyes and the no nonsense conversational style, is particularly good. Brolin becomes the country and cocky Llewelyn Moss very well. He is much more likable in the movie than in the book.
One thing that the movie cleared up for me was the business with the money in the air conditioning shaft at the motel. Llewelyn puts it there in the first place to hide it. When he comes back to the motel he sees that the drapes are a bit parted and he knows somebody's in there waiting for him. So he rents the room on the other side and manages to pull the suitcase out. The Mexicans who were waiting for him didn't have the tracking device (transponder) so they didn't know the money was nearby. Chigurh knows of course, but by the time he is through shooting the Mexicans, Llewelyn is gone.
A problem in the very beginning of the movie comes up when Llewelyn acknowledges that he is about to do something incredibly foolish. He goes back to the bloody scene in the scrub desert to bring the dying Mexican some water. The fact that he says it's foolish doesn't excuse it as a plot device. The guy was just about dead when Llewelyn left him many hours earlier. Coming back now with water isn't going to save him. Furthermore, Llewelyn was originally indifferent to his thirst. There must have been some water or something to drink somewhere in all the vehicles on the scene, but Llewelyn doesn't bother looking. It's curious that Llewelyn didn't realize that bringing the man who had been bleeding for many hours some water wasn't really going to help. If he wanted to help he could have dialed 911.
By the way, this device, which has the effect of giving Llewelyn a "fatal flaw" in the Greek dramatic sense, was also in Cormac McCarthy's novel. If Llewelyn doesn't return to the scene, the story would play out a bit differently, to say the least. Since Chigurh has the transponder he would locate the money and possibly take Llewelyn by surprise.
What are the chances that Carson Wells (Woody Harrison) is able to go to the exact spot where Llewelyn threw the money over the fence and into bushes? Close to zero, I would say. I suspect that the Coens were going to do something with this unlikely plot event but as it turns out, they didn't. In fact, there is a lot they didn't do or show, so much so, I just think they got overwhelmed with all the footage they had and the time constraints and just sliced it up near the end.
Now, why this is called "No Country for Old Men"? Cormac McCarthy took his cue from the poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats. Here is the opening stanza.
That is no country for old men. The young
in one another's arms, birds in the trees
--Those dying generations--at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
The theme of Yeats' poem is the impermanence of this world, and so he set sail "To the holy city of Byzantium" where things are made of more permanent stuff such "as Grecian goldsmiths make" and where things are eternal like ideas.
One of McCarthy's points is that the bloody violence of the border towns of West Texas about which he writes resembles more "the mackerel-crowded seas" than the holy city of Byzantium, and the "sensual music" is the sound of bullet hitting bone from those dying generations at their song. Additionally, the old men in the story, Ed Tom Bell (played very effectively by Tommy Lee Jones), Roscoe Giddens (Rodger Boyce), and Ellis (Barry Corbin), feel estranged from the lust of the young after money and drugs.
The premise of the movie centers around a dope drop in the semi-desert gone bad that Llewelyn Moss stumbles onto some time after the shooting has stopped. Moss is wondering, where's the money? He follows the bloody trail of someone carrying something heavy and finds him and it. It's a carrying case with $2-million in hundred dollar bills.
Needless to say that kind of cash attracts a lot of flies.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)