No Country for Old Men ~

Believe me, I have no wish to compare No Country for Old Men to the likes of simplistic horror films, but I'm going to tell you right now that Anton Chigurh is a whole lot more frightening than Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers or Jason ever dreamed (pardon the Freddy pun) of being. Javier Bardem ( Before Night Falls, for which he became the first Spanish actor ever to be nominated for an Academy award) as Chigurh has to be one of the most disturbing film characters I've seen in many a moon. I'm not normally affected by murderous film villains all that strongly, but this guy had my stomach in a knot. And I do mean this as a compliment.

Admittedly, this film isn't for everyone. But then again, no film by the Oscar winning Coen brothers has been. Now, I should confess here that I've had a soft spot in my heart for the brothers Coen, Joel and Ethan, since their Blood Simple days. Still, that in no way negates the fact that this is one solid piece of work. It's frustrating as all get out at times, but extremely potent...and layered.

I don't like to give away much of a given film's plot, mainly because I like to go into a movie as fresh as I can (as a youngster I was crushed when I accidentally learned all the juicy details of The Empire Strikes Back before I saw the movie), but I will say this - the plot centers around a drug deal that went very, very, very wrong. Josh Brolin ( American Gangster) consummately portrays South Texas man Llewelyn Moss, who stumbles across the crime scene and a couple million dollars, which he decides he may as well try and benefit from. But Anton Chigurh, among others, is bent on retrieving the cash. That's not all that drives this frightening-and intelligent-soul, but the rest I will leave for you to discover. If he doesn't give you the willies though, there's something wrong with you.

The film does have a gloriously quirky sense of humor, however, and on that note I don't want to leave out Tommy Lee Jones ( In the Valley of Elah), another Oscar winner who gives one of his very best performances here as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. On the surface, this seems like the type of role he could do in his sleep-and it kind of is-but in this instance he brings a great deal of nuance to his character. It's truly a pleasure to watch him and to feel the poignancy underneath that surface.

One of the fascinating, and frustrating, elements of this film is the manner in which it hits the viewer with the randomness and unknowable aspects of life. In fact, I defy anyone to claim that they were able to predict the film's ending. The last third of the picture is a head cocker by anyone's standards. And the entire piece is full of disturbing (and time appropriate?) images. Sheriff Bell even laments the passage of the previous way of life, in which a law enforcement officer might choose to wear no gun at all, but in the present environment he has to send a young unrepentant teenage boy to the electric chair for the cold blooded murder of a girl simply because he sought the thrill of killing her. Yet the man he's searching for now makes that teenager seem like a choir boy.

In the modern era this truly does seem to be "no country for old men."

Rev: 11-26-2007