Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
Starring: Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Tess Harper
Even the low-key opening shots of a desolate Texas landscape, shot with cinematographer Roger Deakins' pellucid camera, announce that No Country for Old Men is a startling return to form for the brothers Coen. Working this time from the stark, weary poetry of the Cormac McCarthy novel, the Coens have constructed a near-perfect meditation on the violence of our times and the inability of 'good' people to ride out to meet it.The core narrative tells the story of Vietnam vet Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin, in his second great performance from 2007 after his supporting role in American Gangster), who stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad, the only thing remaining being corpses, one lone survivor barely alive, enough shell casings to be melted down into a stealth bomber, a shitload of drugs, and a breathtaking wad of cash. Moss, of course, takes the dough, which unleashes a fan-hitting storm of Babylonian proportions and triggers a relentless pursuit of Moss by humanoid psycho-killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Meanwhile, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) follows the trail of clues and corpses to try and find Moss before Chigurh gets a chance to do what he does best.
Though the film would appear to be about Moss, the twin poles of this story are Bell and Chigurh. In an Oscar-winning performance, Javier Bardem portrays Chigurh as an almost extraterrestrial, uncontrollable, incomprehensible and unstoppable force of bloodshed and evil. The character's odd hairstyle, unplaceable accent, unfamiliar destructive weapons (a cattle killing device powered by compressed air and a shotgun outfitted with a cylindrical metal silencer), and automaton-like persistence build a presence that is like an alien inhabiting human skin. Chigurh is almost reminiscent of Jeff Bridges alien-in-a-cloned-body in John Carpenter's Starman, not quite at home in his bones, unfamiliar with social rituals, and uncomfortable with the phraseology of language ("Call it, friend-o."). He is a chilling representation of mindless, omnipresent, relentless evil.In opposition is Sheriff Bell, played with weather-rasped aplomb by Tommy Lee Jones. Bell is an honest lawman, eroded by years of confronting the worst in human nature, who now ponders the fruitlessness of thinking we can ever defeat it. His reflections on the rising incidence of extreme, senseless violence and the efforts to combat it like trying to shout back the coming tide, form the reflective core of the film: “…I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it, but I don't know what it is anymore. More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, ‘O.K., I'll be part of this world.’”
While the film is contemplative, the Coens deliver several astonishingly constructed set pieces. One sequence, involving Moss and Chigurh at a motel, waiting patiently for each to make his move, trying to outwit the other, is so brilliant in its clear construction and ability to wring gut-punching suspense out of simple image, editing, and sound, that it makes me weep for all the over-edited mash-ups of pixels and noise that I've had to endure at the cinema in the past few years. Another similarly impressive confrontation at a hotel that ends in a street chase and shoot-out is one of the most bravura slices of pure cinematic genius of any film in the past several years. The Coens take Hitchcock's ability to build unbearable suspense with rudimentary tools and apply their own darkly comic spin to amazing effect.No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for the Best Picture of 2007 and, amazingly enough, could actually be plausibly called the best film of 2007. It's a timeless film and a must-see.
