FilmEdge.net reviews NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

I admit it; I am the Coen brothers’ biggest fan.  And I was enthralled and moved by Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.  When I heard that the Joel and Ethan Coen were taking the novel to the screen, I couldn’t wait to see the results.  No other modern directors handle violence as well, and this is an incredibly violent story.  The screen adaptation follows the plotline of the book closely, and with this effort the Coens have raised the bar for adaptive screenplays.  This film is nearly perfect from the first title frame to the cut-to-black ending.  I left the theater reeling, and have not stopped thinking about this film since.  I hate to use a cliché, but this film is an instant classic, and film students will be studying it for years to come.  The title is taken from the William Butler Yeats poem Sailing to Byzantium, a classic poem of aging and death. Set in southwest Texas at the end of the 1970’s, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is the story of three men and their relationship to a drug deal gone terribly wrong.  Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a thirty-something welder who stumbles upon the gruesome scene in the desert while hunting antelope.  He realizes immediately that something is amiss, and that someone has walked away from the grisly scene.  When he finds this man — dead — he also finds a satchel containing over two million dollars.  He decides to keep the cash.  This is where our story begins in earnest.  Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is the Terrell county sheriff nearing retirement, his experience showing on his face and in his laconic (and often witty) comments to his deputy.

Ed Tom opens the movie with a voiced-over account of a man he sent to the electric chair.  As the film progresses, we realize that Tom Ed is a lawmaker from a different era who is exhausted and overwhelmed by the big business and sophistication of a new generation of high-volume heroin smugglers.  While Llewellyn is trying to figure out how to handle his windfall, and while Tom Ed is trying to pass this mass murder on to the DEA, an enigmatic man is moving through Terrell County.  He is searching for the missing cash, and he will move in a straight line to that target, killing anyone who might be in his way.  This man is a cool-headed, well-trained, intelligent professional who does not kill for pleasure.  He operates under a firm, well-defined code of personal honor, but shows no loyalty to anyone else.  He is a man of his word, but available to the highest bidder. He curiously dressed and has an oddly formal manner, yet he seems to be invisible as he crosses Texas in a swath of blood. His name is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem).

This film is breathtakingly violent, but it is not about violence.  The Coens manage to blur the line between good and evil, between duty and irresponsibility, between love and greed, between “must-do” and “choose-to-do.”  By the end of the film, the audience is not quite sure who the bad guy really is.  And that’s where the genius of this story lies.  The central question in this film, unignorable and in-your-face, left lying exposed like a bullet-strewn body in the desert, is “Who is right, and who is wrong?”  By the final frame, you’ll have strong arguments on both sides for every character.  The Coens remind us that there are no absolutes here except for life and death, and even the killer-for-hire realizes that chance plays a part in that, as well.

Every performance in this film is spot-on.  The characters are deep and thoughtful.  Tess Harper, as Sheriff Bell’s wife, is luminous and gentle.  Woody Harrelson gives a brief but brilliant turn as an ex-Green Beret turned hitman sent to rein in the rogue Chigurh.  And Kelly Macdonald, who plays Llewellyn’s wife Carla Jean, is heartbreakingly genuine.  She has been thrust into a situation she does not understand by a man that she does understand.  She dutifully trusts a husband who will ultimately betray that trust; while he does the “right thing,” he dooms the woman he loves to tragedy. 

Technically, this film is, well, just about perfect.  The sound effects are nearly a character unto themselves, and they reel the viewer into the hypersensitive world of the hunter and hunted.  The cinematography almost allows the audience to taste the dust, feel the heat, and smell the flop-sweat that permeates every corner of each cheap hotel room.  There is a hint or two of the black humor we have come to expect in a Coen brothers’ film, but there is no comedy. Nothing in this movie is wasted; not a word of dialog, not a frame of film.  We start with a black screen, and end the same way—no one will ride off into the sunset here.

Fair warning:  this film is absolutely not appropriate for children or the squeamish.  It’s not an action-thriller, although there’s plenty of both.  There’s also plenty of suspense, but it’s not a murder-mystery.  It’s a morality play that twists the idea of Everyman by pitting ethics against self-preservation.  It is a story of anti-heroes blanketed by doubt and exhaustion as they edge into a high-tech age.  Most importantly, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN forces us to think about ourselves, and our own dark capabilities.  See this film, and then talk about it.  Five stars out of five for this gem!