A Movie Directed by the Coens

Rating: 8/10 (9 April 2009)

When I saw this movie at the cinema, I remember loving it. I still do. But as I was coming out and thinking about what I had just seen, I realized I hadn't seen a Coens movie. I had just seen a thriller that happened to be directed by the Coens.
No Country for Old Men is one of the finest movies I've seen in recent years, and like most Coens fans I rejoiced in their winning the Oscars at last. But I wish they had been recognized for a movie that's more similar to their usual work. I have no complaints about the technical aspects of the movie: sound, editing, cinematography are all excellent. The acting is good, especially Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin's. Javier Bardem didn't impress me the way he did everyone else that year: I think cinema has enough one-dimensional, monotone pseudo-philosophical badass villains who behave like the Terminator as it is. But I can't blame the Coens. They're just following Cormac McCarthy's novel here.
Most of my complaints spring from novel. The Coens, constrained by it, couldn't fill the movie with their usual brand of nonsense and quirky humor. This is a serious movie, more serious than a heart attack, although it's nothing more than a chase movie. Not even in Blood Simple, arguably the Coens most darkest movie, were they ever this serious; they counteracted it with a lot of off-beat humor.
One of things I love in the Coens is how life is pretty cheap. Visser in Blood Simple can kill for just $10,000. In Fargo, Carl and Gaear can kidnap just for $80,000. Pathetic amounts when we think about the millions that usually pop in crime movies. But it shows how cruel people can. Not in this movie: $2,000,000 are at stake here, a sum worth killing for indeed. I can't blame Anton Chigurh (Bardem) for having so much trouble about it.
Apart from minor quibbles, No Country for Old Men is worth watching. The things the Coens do with sound, silence and shadows in this movie is amazing. Roger Deakins deserved an Oscar. The first showdown between Moss (Brolin) and Chigurh is just a masterpiece of suspense.
Tommy Lee Jones gives my favorite performance in the movie, as an aging, small-town sheriff who can't really cope with the dark modern world of Chigurh. Jones projects so much world-weariness and sadness onto his face, you feel he's really been a cop all his life.
All in all, this is a tense, fast-paced thriller, worth watching as much for its story as for its technical aspects. It's a great movie. It's just not a great Coens movie.