No Country for Old Men

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a shot of desolate, wide-open country in West Texas in June 1980. In a voice-over, the local sheriff, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), tells of the changing times: in the old days, some sheriffs never wore guns, as did his late father, who was the sheriff before him; in the modern day and age, however, Bell once sent an unrepentant teenage boy to the electric chair who had killed a girl simply because he wanted to kill someone, had been "fixin'" to do it for some time, and would do it again if he had the chance.Along a desert highway, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is arrested by a deputy (Zach Hopkins). They return to the empty police station, where the deputy calls Sheriff Bell. He tells the Sheriff about an odd device in Chigurh's possession (a captive bolt pistol). The deputy thinks it may be an oxygen tank, but it is actually a device used to kill cattle in the slaughter house. The deputy has his back to Chigurh, who sneaks up behind him and just as the deputy hangs up the phone, uses the handcuff chain to garrote the deputy. After cleaning himself up in the station bathroom, Chigurh steals a squad car and once on a desert highway, uses the car's lights and siren to stop a random motorist (Chip Love) driving a Ford sedan.He politely asks the man to step out of the car. Chigurh then asks the man to hold still and presses the captive bolt pistol attached to the compressed air tank against the puzzled driver's forehead. He squeezes the trigger and it fires the bolt into the man's skull, killing him. Chigurh drives off in the man's car.Elsewhere in the desert, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is hunting pronghorns. Setting the sights of his hunting rifle on one, he fires, scattering the animals. Walking to where the herd stood, he notices a trail of blood. Realizing the pronghorn left in a different direction from the blood trail, he spies a wounded pit bull hobbling away. Retracing the dog's trail, Moss eventually comes upon several pickup trucks parked in the middle of the wilderness. Mexican criminals and pit bulls lie dead on the ground; only a mortally wounded driver remains alive.The driver begs Moss for agua, but Moss says that he has no water. Moss asks the man where the "last man standing" - the winner - is, but doesn't get an answer. He carefully takes the man's submachine gun off the seat and a magazine from his shirt pocket. Under a tarp in the bed of one pickup, Moss sees what appears to be a great deal of heroin.Moss tracks the only criminal to have escaped the shootout to a tree where he finds the man has died. He finds a large catalog case filled with two million dollars and a .45 caliber pistol. He takes the money and gun. He returns home where he hides the submachine gun under his mobile home. His wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) is irritated that he has been gone all day and he refuses to tell her where he found the pistol and catalog case. She asks him what's in the case but doesn't believe him when he off-handedly tells her it's full of money.That night, Moss guiltily wakes up, deciding that he should take water to the wounded driver. He arrives around dawn and parks a short distance away on a rise. He carries a gallon of water to the scene of the shootout, but discovers that the wounded man has been killed by a shotgun round to his head.Looking back to where he'd parked his pickup truck atop the rise, Moss dimly sees in the predawn light another truck now parked alongside his. Two men get out and appear to slash his truck's tires. He tries to hide behind under one of the trucks, but is fired upon by the men who are now approaching in their truck, using bright searchlights.More gunmen appear, disable his truck and fire on him, hitting him in the shoulder. Moss flees with the pickup pursuing him, but is hit in the shoulder by a shotgun round just as he reaches a river embankment. As Moss tumbles towards the river with dawn breaking, the two men, apparently Mexicans, send a pit bull after him. Evading continued gunfire, Moss dives into the river and swims downstream, eventually crossing to the other side with the pit bull gaining on him. On the opposite bank, Moss frantically ejects an empty shell from the .45, reloads the gun, and kills the dog at the moment it leaps at him.He bandages his wounds, realizing he is facing dangerous individuals. He returns home and sends Carla Jean to stay with her mother in Odessa while he travels separately with the money.After filling up at a gas station in the dead man's Ford, Chigurh goes to pay for some candy from the gas proprietor (Gene Jones). The proprietor tries to make polite conversation out of simple friendliness, but Chigurh is upset at the inane small talk, and the owner finds himself in a strange, tense confrontation. The man is genuinely perplexed by his customer's anxiety, and tries to defuse the argument by saying he needs to close the station, which only further irritates Chigurh due to it being still midday. Chigurh requires him to call the flip of coin to decide whether the man is to win everything, apparently whether the man will live or die. The clerk guesses heads and Chigurh gives the man the coin. He tells him not to mix it with any other coins.Later that night, two well-dressed men take Chigurh to the site of the failed drug deal. He removes the VIN tag from Moss's truck door and examines the corpses. The well-dressed men give him a tracking device on which they said they're getting "not a bleep." that he can use to find the catalog case of money, which has a transponder hidden in it, although it has not received any signals. Chigurh picks up a pistol laying next to one dead men and kills both of them.The following morning, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and Deputy Wendell (Garret Dillahunt) respond to a report of a burning car, and recognize the Ford belonging to the dead motorist. They follow tire tracks to the shoot out site, where Sheriff Bell recognizes Moss's truck. He and Wendell carefully look over the scene and then decide to call in federal authorities. The heroin is gone from the back of the pickup.Chigurh appears at Moss and Carla Jean's trailer and uses the captive bolt pistol to break the lock. The trailer is empty but hurriedly vacated, but he finds in the unopened mail a phone bill that reveals the couple has made a lot of calls to Odessa, TX. He tries to intimidate the trailer park manager (Kathy Lamkin) into revealing where Moss works and seems to contemplate killing her, but when he hears noise in the adjacent room, leaves.Moss puts his wife on a bus and reassures her that he will call her in a couple of days. He takes a cab from the bus station to a motel, where he rents a room and hides the money case deep in the HVAC duct using the clothes bar from a closet. Moss leaves the hotel and buys boots and socks. Moss takes a cab back to his motel but a truck parked near his room makes him suspicious and he directs the driver to take him to another motel.Chigurh meanwhile calls numbers on the phone bill to try to figure out where Moss is headed. He then begins driving, trying to anticipate where Moss is headed.The next morning Moss purchases a tent for its poles, duct tape, wire cutters, and a 12 gauge shotgun and ammo at a local sporting goods store. He returns to the second hotel room, where he saws off the shotgun barrel and stock. He returns to his first hotel and rents a second room immediately behind his first room. It shares the HVAC duct with his first room. In the second room, he uses the tent poles, duct tape, and coat hangers to fashion a hook that he uses to retrieve the catalog case full of money from the HVAC duct.Chigurh is driving past the motel when the tracking device goes off. He finds the motel, and by the frequency of its beeping he deduces which room the signal is coming from, Moss's first room. Chigurh rents a room and takes off his boots so he can quietly walk up to the room where the signal is coming from. He uses his captive bolt pistol to break into the room. Chigurh finds three Mexicans in the room and kills them with a suppressed shotgun. The Mexicans' gunfire alerts Moss in the opposite room. Chigurh searches the room for the case, finally noticing the HVAC duct. He opens it to see the tracks where the case was dragged. Moss escapes into the dark with the money and hitchhikes out of the area. The driver (Mathew Greer) who picks him up tells him he shouldn't be hitch-hiking because it's dangerous.The next day, in a high-rise office building in Dallas, a bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) arrives in a businessman's (Stephen Root) large office. The businessman is upset about the many killings perpetrated by Chigurh. He wants Wells to contain the situation. Wells tells the businessman that he has had past dealings with Chigurh and would know him by sight. Wells also compares Chigurh to the bubonic plague and calls him a psychopathic killer. The businessman hires Wells to control the "situation" with Chigurh and to retrieve the money.In a border town, Moss rents a room in an older, rundown multistory hotel. Unable to sleep, he is apparently trying to figure out how Chigurh tracked him down to the previous motel. He searches the case and finds the transponder that Chigurh has been using to find him. He hears suspicious noises and calls the clerk who had checked him in at the front desk. The clerk (Marc Miles) had told Moss he'd be on until the next morning at 10 a.m., but he doesn't answer. He sees the shadow of feet under his door, but then the hall lights go dark. Chigurh shoots out the lock with the captive bolt pistol, hitting Moss, who fires his shotgun into the door. Moss then drops the case out the second story window and follows it. Chigurh shoots at him from the window but misses. Moss is wounded in the side by the door lock.Moss stops a pick-up truck driver (Luce Rains) and tells him to drive him out of there, but Chigurh kills the driver. Moss ducks down and drives the truck around a corner, crashing into a vehicle. He hides behind a nearby car, watching in a store window for whoever is following him. He shoots and wounds Chigurh. Wounded himself, Moss drives the pick-up to the nearby Rio Grande where he buys a jacket from some passing youths on the border bridge, and he also tosses the money case into some brush along the bank. He covers his bloody shirt with the jacket and, posing as a "drunk Mexican" waves the bottle of beer drunkenly at the half-sleeping Mexican border guard as he stumbles past to cross over into Mexico; the sleepy guard is unconcerned with his identity. In the morning he is awakened by members of a Norteño Band who he pays to take him to a hospital.Sheriff Bell continues to be disturbed by what he saw in the desert and the apparently deteriorating state of morals in the world. He goes to visit Carla Jean in Odessa and asks her to put him in touch with her husband. Almost absentmindedly, he tells her how a local farmer was nearly killed by an animal he was trying to slaughter, and how slaughterhouses now used compressed air guns to kill cattle immediately. In the border town, Chigurh, wounded in the thigh by a buckshot round, sets a car on fire as a diversion and nonchalantly steals medical supplies. In a motel room, he cuts off his pants and treats his wound.Carson visits Moss in the Mexican hospital and suggests that he just hand over the money so Carson can protect him. Moss refuses and Carson tells him in which hotel he is staying. On the way back across the border, Carson sees the catalog case from the bridge. Back at his hotel, the same one at which Moss was staying, Carson is confronted by Chigurh. Carson tries to strike a deal with Chigurh for his life but when the phone rings, Chigurh kills him. Moss is on the phone, and Chigurh tells him that if he brings him the money, he won't kill his wife, though he can't do the same for Moss. Chigurh lets Moss know that he knows exactly where he is and, instead of coming to kill him in the hospital, he is going to go to Carla Jean's mother's house. Moss tells Chigurh he will kill him then hangs up.Moss leaves the hospital and retrieves the case. He calls Carla Jean at her mother's in Odessa and tells her to fly to El Paso to meet him. Chigurh meanwhile goes to Dallas where he kills the businessman for hiring not only Carson but the Mexicans as well. His truck breaks down and a chicken farmer (Chris Warner) with a flatbed full of chicken cages stops to help. Chigurh asks where the nearest airport is. The farmer names El Paso, and Chigurh asks him if the chicken cages can be removed from the truck. Sometime later he is washing the chicken feathers off the back of the truck at a car wash.The Mexicans who have been watching Carla Jean in Odessa follow her and her mother (Beth Grant) to the airport. One of the Mexicans helps her mother with her luggage and she tells him she and Carla Jean are going to El Paso. In the airport, Carla Jean calls Sheriff Bell and tells him where Moss is staying in El Paso. At the hotel, a woman (Ana Reeder) sun-bathing by the pool flirts with Moss. She invites him to her room for beer, but he says that he's married and that he knows what beer leads to, and declines her offer.Sheriff Bell is driving up to Moss's motel when he hears automatic gunfire and sees a pickup truck speeding off. At the motel, Sheriff Bell sees a large number of empty shell casings on the ground by the pool, where a woman is floating dead. He then sees Llewelyn Moss dead in the open doorway of his room. The money case is missing.All Sheriff Bell can do is comfort Carla Jean when she arrives. Later that night, Sheriff Bell and the local sheriff (Rodger Boyce) have coffee and bemoan the declining morals of American society. Afterward, Sheriff Bell returns to the motel and nearly misses being killed by Chigurh who had been searching the room for the money case.Sheriff Bell visits his uncle, Ellis (Barry Corbin) to tell him he's retiring because he is too disturbed by the violence he's seen. Ellis tells him he's being vain and relates the story about how Sheriff Bell's grandfather had died: shot by 8 outlaws, he bled to death in his wife's arms on his front porch as they watched. Meanwhile, Chigurh visits Carla Jean, who has just buried her mother. She understands why he's there but still finds it meaningless. Chigurh flips a coin but Carla Jean refuses to play his game. Carla Jean dismisses Chigurh's game, saying that he's the one who decides on whether or not to kill her, not the coin. He is unmoved, however, insisting on his lack of a free choice in the matter. During this exchange, we see two boys ride past the house on bicycles. Chigurh leaves the house and stops to check his boots, apparently for blood.Driving off, he is looking at the same two boys in the rear view mirror when he's struck broadside by a car speeding through the intersection. Chigurh gets out of his car, his arm bone protruding out of his elbow. The two neighborhood boys come up to him to see if he's all right. Chigurh pays one of the kids for his shirt, which he uses to make a sling for his arm, and he asks them to tell the authorities that he had already left. Chigurh limps away down the street.At Sheriff Bell's house, the sheriff ponders what to do for the day at breakfast with his wife, Loretta (Tess Harper); he is restless in retirement, but she rebuffs his offer to help out around the house, as he will just throw off her established routine. He recounts a dream he had about his sheriff father. Bell dreamed that he and his father were riding a mountain pass in the night. His father, carrying a horn with embers inside that glowed like moonlight, rode ahead into the darkness and disappeared. Though he couldn't see anything in the dark night, Bell dreamed that he kept riding forward since his father would have a warm fire waiting for him.

Tags: comedy, dark, neo noir, murder, boring, suspenseful, realism, dramatic, violence, mystery, atmospheric, plot twist, good versus evil, insanity, tragedy, revenge

Review:
I would have liked a bit more development in his character, but what little there is helps his performance greatly.Supporting turns from Woody Harrelson and Kelly Macdonald are also done well, but are overshadowed by the main cast by both Brolin and Jones.And even more of an overcast is Bardem as the ruthless Chigurh.
Instead, the unholy trinity of temptation, cynicism and pure, dark, evil take center stage in this modern western directed by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.Based on the 2003 novel by Cormac McCarthy, the movie unfolds in the dusty Texas borderlands as hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon the remnants of a desert drug deal gone bad, complete with a case containing two million dollars.
Succumbing to temptation, Moss makes off with the money setting in motion a chain of events that leaves a trail of blood spattered carnage across the State as he is pursued by the ruthless, coin tossing hit man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) among whose killing weapons of choice is a pneumatic air gun.Bearing little in common with pretty much any previous Coen film with the possible exception of Blood Simple, No Country for Old Men is a dark, bleak, ode to the baser elements of the human soul, and a spit in the eye to the noble ones as well.With a structural trademark hinging upon breaking the conventional norms of predictability, No Country is a movie that will unsettle you at successive turns - in the way deaths are dealt out; by its palpable tension that can almost be cut with a knife, and its periodic deviations from the narrative norm  the latter likely the only Coen brothers "quirk" for which their movies are renown.Switching back and forth between the game of cat and mouse being played out by Moss and Chigurh and the investigation of unfolding events by cynical aging Texas Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), the Coens weave a web of dangled threads that one can't help but expect will be neatly tied together at story's end, only to tie them up in ways that buck the storytelling norm and manage to be both unsatisfying and true to their nature at the same time.Unforgettable among this tableau is Bardem's Chigurh.
It was not very long before I watched 'No Country for Old Men' that I watched the other remarkable film of 2007, 'There Will Be Blood.' Back then I thought that Paul Thomas Anderson has delivered the Best Picture of the year with his oil epic, but after watching the Coen brothers chilling and violent adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, I knew right away that here was a film destined to be even a greater film than any I've seen this past year.It's not easy to watch 'No Country for Old Men.' The first time I saw it, I found myself dazed enough to not be able to stand-up immediately even after the whole end credits have finished.
On the literal level, it is a simple cat-and-mouse chase thriller movie, but from within its roots lie a very profound philosophical and penetrating analysis not only of the characters and the situations involved in the story, but also of the kind of world we are living in today and the more monstrous sides of it we often choose to ignore.The story revolves around the chase between a guy named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin,) who stumbles upon a stash of money in a drug deal gone wrong in the middle of the desert and a psychopathic but surprisingly "principled" assassin named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem).
Also remarkable is the photography (done by Roger Deakins) of vast scenes in the desert where even what the ordinary moviegoer would consider as "empty scenes", where no action is played out, tells a story in a visual manner, where even when there is no dialogue or action on screen, the sweeping images speak out for themselves.'No Country for Old Men' is rich in such bravura kind of film-making.
This style is present throughout the film and one of the particular points that makes it more than just a chase movie.I must say that I can't help but agree to most people when they say the Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh is the most disturbing character (and yet mesmerizing) to grace the screen since Anthony Hopkins introduced us to Hannibal Lecter in 'Silence of the Lambs.' Chigurh effectively radiates evil and embodies violence in a very intelligent and forceful manner that touches the fear in all of us.
All at the same time the movie is a character study on the effects of evil and innocence lost, an exploration on the themes of fate and chance, an analysis of the freedom to choose and its consequences, a reflection on evil and good as forces of society and the investigation of basic human emotions such as hope, fear, love, violence and aspiration in the face of a variety of situations..
Jones too was good in a strong supporting role as a close to retirement sheriff who is on the outside shaking his head at the carnage and mayhem unleashed by the simple finding and taking of a satchel full of money.The real gem and glue of the film though is Javier Bardem's menacing character who has his own brand of justice, which is extremely harsh and well insane.
The man exuded controlled evil, and I found myself not breathing when he came onto screen, yet couldn't take my eyes from him - a truly mesmerising presence.Tommy Lee Jones turns in a belter of a performance, and mention should also be made of Kelly MacDonald who nails a faultless Texan accent alongside a multi-layered performance (despite the paucity of her screen time).Beautifully shot, as you would expect, and with some (welcome) moments of humour amongst the gore, this is a very very fine film.
This was a big part of the development of the Moss character in the book, with it being clear that Moss was loyal to his wife and would not take advantage of the teenager even when propositioned, and afterwards the hanging question of what his wife would think when he was found dead in a motel with a teenage runaway.Anyway, book versus film aside, this movie features some truly brilliant performances, and is an astounding achievement in storytelling and filmmaking.
Film Review: "No Country For Old Men" (2007)The best picture / best director winner at the 80th Academy Awards Ceremony on February 24th 2008 has nothing lost of its razor-sharply observed motion picture thriller infusions, where directing duo Joel & Ethan Coen let silent scenes with crystal-clear sound design and pin-pointed dialogue exchanges reign adapted from a novel under the same film-given title by Cormac McCarthy to further Hitchcockian suspense elements in abandoned Texan small town hotel location, where "No Country For Old Men" finds its climatic action highlight under bullet-piercing precision between the character of Llewelyn Moss, performed by utterly stubbornness actor Josh Brolin, confronting an invisible menace of everywhere delivering actor Javier Bardem as contracting serial killer Anton Chigurh.The overall 1980 setting, skillfully provided by production designer Jess Gonchor and costume designer Mary Zophres gives the film its flavoring taste, presenting itself undeniable as one of the directors most comfortably produced motion pictures, exceeding their thriller origins from 1984's presentation of "Blood Simple." under 25 Million Dollar budget.
Joel & Ehtan Coen own the picture in every scene providing story twists by the minutes to keep the suspension level high throughout under further initially thanks to cinematographer Roger Deakins, who provides painterly-like static shots and then again moves the camera vertically on the exterior highways and horizontally in the interior hotel corridors to bring the audience a hypnotically cold rushes of blood to their heads that every encounter of action hits like daggers to the senses.Actor Tommy Lee Jones gives the picture stability with two monologue surrounding "No Country For Old Men", letting the spectators indulge on times in the state of change, where thoughts gets liberated and with them the fundamental existence of anarchy and its inhabited physical as psychological violence in every human being striving its way through cinema with a new kind of seriousness in treating essential problems of the human condition that life must end toward death, forced by another or giving-up in old age, seem to be freedom of choice in some one's own liking; questions, which will not get answered but thought-provokingly asked by the Coen Brothers in such a stylized cinematic manner that the picture keeps on staying instantly fresh in its perception after ten years of release; arguably deserved its upper-hand over the character-wise more accomplished picture "There Will Be Blood" with the Best Picture Oscar for the year 2007.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC).
As Chigurh pursues Llewelyn, others are close behind including Sheriff Ed, a drug cartel, other trackers and Llewelyn's girlfriend, only a few of whom are cut out for this game of cat and mouse.Ten years after the release of the film and it is well understood how it made or sealed the careers of Javier Bardem (Chigurh), Josh Brolin (Llewelyn), Tommy Lee Jones (Ed) and not least of all the Coens who are some of the best directors in the business.
Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell balances his dangerous chase for a monster assassin with the equally dangerous chase for a good ole' cowboy that comes down hard on the bad side of some very bad people.Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss finds himself in a dangerous dilemma when he brushes up against a bloodbath of a drug deal gone terribly bad and a satchel with 2 million dollars inside.
The rest ensues as a thrilling triple narrative, from a determined man with 2 million dollars on the run, only hoping to escape the mess that he stumbled upon, an old man sheriff facing an evil like none he's ever seen, and a psychopathic killer, an unstoppable evil with no remorse and a extraordinary determination to find what is his.With its blood-soaked scenes, grimy West Texas setting and haunting terror filled moments between characters, No Country for Old Men is both riveting and beautiful.
No Country for Old Men is not necessarily the Coen Brothers' best movie, I consider Barton Fink, Fargo, Miller's Crossing and The Big Lebowski better.
-SPOILER-START- How they expected to get away with showing a movie for 1.5 hours, closely following the protagonist, and having him being killed off-screen in a 12 second scene, is beyond me.-SPOILER-END- And since when is mumbling some cod-philosophical verbal diarrhea a good replacement for closure in a movie which desperately needed some sensible conclusion?
Woody Harrelson is badly miscast as a contract killer in a throw away role.What ultimately makes No Country for Old Men a disappointment is the handling of the villain, Anton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem.
The fascinating character that Chigurh is (he seems to be searching for the meaning of life as well as the stolen money) at the film's beginning degenerates into a Schwarzenegian Terminator manqué by the final reel and this strains the credulity of the movie beyond its breaking point.With Country the brothers Coen may be out of the rut that plagued there last few works but their wheels are still spinning..
I was never really a fan of the Coen Brothers and their work, but the reason why I loved this movie is due to the fact that it points out the violence in the world and how far people will go to get money or drugs.
It would seem to be a return to form, but there's a wandering coldness to the film that leads to grave dissatisfaction.The most disappointing aspect is that there's a near perfect forty-five minute "mini film" riddled with white knuckle suspense involving the cat-and-mouse shoot-em-up between Bardem and Brolin that is lost inside yet another dour opus where Tommy Lee Jones plays a grizzled but good-hearted authority figure philosophizing about the sad state of the world for the umpteenth time.
Turns out I didn't.This film probably warrants a score of about 6 due to some high strong performances and the general quality of film-making, but these are wasted as the story has huge holes and the ending is just nonsense.Those people clogging up the bulletin boards trying to explain how there is some deeper meaning are running themselves in circles creating whole chunks of backstory and assumptions that just aren't provided in the movie.It is the emperors new clothes in a movie, if you claim to see the invisible overcoat that just isn't there then maybe you need to look again..
The movie DID have some terrific moments,but when you string a series of moments together for 2 hours and the storyline does not offer up some basic sets of logic (like a more impressive law enforcement effort after a cop is killed) you come to expect in our age of senseless violence, there is still an audience, sitting there (no matter how smart or stupid they are),waiting for some small semblance of "cohesion" in a story...to give a hint that the people IN the story are not soooooooooo far disconnected with all of the things in the world that the audience sees in their everyday life.
And I don't understand how anybody could be happy with the ending, which does not resolve anything that happened before it.I don't always agree with film critics or popular taste in movies but "No Country for Old Men" sets a new standard.
If it didn't take itself so seriously (this movie thinks it's way more important than it actually is) and had just stopped trying to be so annoyingly 'profound' and concentrated on the plot then I would have enjoyed it so much more.There is ¾ of a good movie here but the last ¼ of the film is spent practically preaching to the audience and that is unforgivable in my opinion after what has come prior to that.NCFOM has left me bewildered at the critical acclaim it has received although there are a few professional reviewers who will at least stand up for themselves and call this movie for what it is, a potentially great movie let down by a poor closing act!
If this doesn't end my year in the top two films of the year then we are in for one hell of an awesome year of movies.The new film from two of the best filmmakers working today No Country For Old Men shows the talents of the Coen Brothers on top form.
One scene featuring Bardem in a gas station is up there with the best scenes i have ever seen on film.I have not gone into the plot here because I saw this film having not read Cormac McCarthy novel and knowing little other than the basic log-line - a man out hunting comes upon a scene of dead bodies, guns, drugs and money on the Mexican border and comes to the attention of both those behind the scene and a local world-wearied sheriff - and i think that's the way to see this film.Go in knowing as little as you can but knowing at least this: this is a serious, violent, slow-paced character piece from the Coens.
The bad guy escapes death by the skin of his teeth AGAIN the money disappears and the sheriff retires but not becoming so philosophical that the whole movie just ends right there at his dinner table with him rambling on about some dreams he had.Again I would love to figure out this movie.I am a 40 year old movie buff Academy Award trivia expert I own over 700 movies I've been a member here for 6 years And I have a college degree.Maybe I ate too many milk duds or something but it went right over my head.If you are looking for a Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind MUST SEE A SECOND OR THIRD TIME TO FULLY UNDERSTAND kind of movie then go for it!If you think you are going to see a Titanic, The Green Mile or Silence Of the Lambs kind of movie where the plot unfolds at a normal pace and doesn't make you search for answers and meaning then don't go see this thing.
The Coen Brothers have succeeded in making what is possibly the most nihilistic film in the history of cinema, and in doing so they have divided the audience like Moses parting the Red Sea. A lot of people love this film and feel it is one of the greatest ever made, while I'm on the opposite side, thinking the film is too frustrating to be enjoyed.The story, as you may know, revolves around Lleweleyn Moss (Josh Brolin) and, upon his discovery of a crime scene (a drug sale gone horribly wrong), the theft of two million dollars.
Then they have both hero and wife murdered off camera, and again you honestly cannot believe that it happened.The worst thing of all though is the ending, you keep thinking that the bad guy will get caught, but no he gets away, after killing like 1 million people, and the film closes with our Sheriff who's done jack anyway talking about some dreams he had.
Not to mention bloated dead bodies of dogs and humans and a "man who wouldn't die"."No Country for Old Men" has Javier Bardem playing Anton Chigurh, a monstrous motive-less killer (unless you count the money, but how does he know about it?) He slides in and out of scenes, you are always chilled but like the clichéd train-wreck victims you see reeling on the side of the road, he never engages you, you never speculate on what made him this way, he is simply a nerveless, passionless cypher.Actually the clichés were too many to count in this truly, truly disappointing effort from the Coen brothers.
I kind of feel like this is one of those movies that got cut too many times before the film reached the studios, and as a result we're left with a story that doesn't have a plot line.