No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray + Digital)

I'm a HUGE fan of the Coen Brothers. Even some of their less successful movies always leave me delighted because they dare play around with tone and audience expectations. Who but this brotherly team would attempt a movie like THE LADYKILLERS or MAN WHO WASN'T THERE? But in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, they return to their true forte...the crime thriller.Although my personal favorite is RAISING ARIZONA...it is probably true that in decades from now the Coens will be best remembered and admired for BLOOD SIMPLE, FARGO, MILLER'S CROSSING and now their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bleak Southwest thriller.NO COUNTRY...tells the story of how one simple man (Josh Brolin), out on a hunting trip somewhere in the vast emptiness of west Texas, stumbles across the scene of a drug deal gone bad. Empty pickup trucks, dead men everywhere, and one lone survivor. This dying man asks for water (which Brolin doesn't have) and then Brolin finds a big bag full of about $2 million. He takes the money, not really thinking about the consequences. We find that he lives in a single wide mobile home with his attractive but too compliant wife.We think Brolin is a simple and probably heartless man...but when he decides he needs to go back and give that dying man some water...his moment of kindness is his undoing. He is discovered and soon his is identified. Now he's being hunted by the authorities, the drug dealers and most awfully, he's being chased by Anton Chugurh (Javier Bardem), who could be one of the most malevolent serial killers / hitmen in movie history.Brolin sends his family into hiding and goes on the run himself. He hops from one rundown hotel room to another, leaving a trail of death and violence following him. And drawing ever closer is Bardem...calm, steady and absolutely convinced that he will recover the money and kill the man who took it.Trying to sort everything out is Tommy Lee Jones as the local sheriff, who feels that not only is he in over his head (although we see very early on that he has a native instinct and craftiness for his work that actually make s him a pretty brilliant investigator)...but he feels that society itself has moved on without him. The scenes of violence he encounters are beyond anything he's experienced. He is afraid, but worse than that, he is spiritually shaken.These three men, and a host of supporting characters (including a well-cast Woody Harrelson) chase each other around...and just the chase itself would make an entertaining film. But what we have here is a film that makes us smell the desperation, feel the emptiness and loneliness of the landscape AND the people who live there. This is a brutal and non-compromising film.It's so great because it is splendidly entertaining...and yet it fills you with a tension that goes beyond the simple plot developments. In a way, we begin to feel about the events much the same way that Tommy Lee Jones feels. We are invited into his inner turmoil...and we feel it. And as always, the Coens are utter masters of tone. They know exactly how funny they want humorous scenes to be and exactly how to turn tension up and down. Then just up and up and up.It is a VERY well acted film. Bardem will almost certainly be nominated for an Oscar...and he deserves it. What a role! He's a complete success at conveying emptiness. He kills with no pleasure...but he has also made killing his first line of action in almost any situation. I guess he's just learned that this is the best way to solve problems and get people out of the way. Bardem is riveting. It's a complete cliché to say "you can't keep your eyes off him," but I'm comfortable reporting that for me, I couldn't keep my eyes off him. It's a brilliant creation of McCarthy's...interpreted by the Coen Brothers and then brought to amazing life by Bardem.Brolin gives by far his finest performance. With this performance and his role in AMERICAN GANGSTER, he must now be taken seriously as an actor. Jones is the ONLY actor who could have played his part...he's that good and that iconic. What other actor do we know who should be playing a grizzled Texas lawman in the modern age? Robert Duvall perhaps? Other than that, the list only includes Jones.I must warn you...you almost certainly will not like the ending. McCarthy has never felt the need to wrap up his stories in a tidy package (doing so would in fact undo much of what he's trying to say about life) and the Coens have not shied away from his vision. I found the ending a little jolting myself...until I took the time to reflect on what it meant and how it made me feel. Then I understood a little better how brilliant it was.This is easily one of the most satisfying, most artistically mature and most viscerally entertaining movies of the year! A triumph for the Coen Brothers!

The powerful novels of Cormac McCarthy may lend themselves to interpretation on film and No Country for Old Men has been successfully translated by the Coen brothers and is a superb work of art in its own right. In an interview in a recent magazine, McCarthy indicated he was pleased with the translation of his novel into a film, saying that the film captured the novel. The direct, bleak, no frills dialogue that is a characteristic of McCarthy's novels is captured in the dialogue in the film. Both the novel and the film are disturbing, not only for violent content but also for the philosophical underpinning of the novel and film. As the literary critic Harold Bloom notes, the violence in McCarthy's work is not gratuitous, but plays and essential role in the underlying message and theme of the work. I hope to focus on this underlying philosophy in this review.The story is that of an everyman, a self contained competent American male against forces that are overpowering even for his rugged native ingenuity. Llewelyn Moss, played superbly by Josh Brolin, discovers where a drug deal gone bad has left all parties (both men an dogs) dead on the field, with neither the money or the drugs taken away. He finds 2 million dollars in payoff money and takes it. However, he violates a basic premise, often explored in the novels of John Bowles, that he should follow his instincts and never second guess himself in such a risky situation. Llewelyn is troubled by the cry of a dying Mexican drug dealer for water and so he fills up an empty milk jug and goes back to the scene of the crimes to give he man water. What a mistake this is and what a price he pays. He is soon pursued by a paid killer, Chigurh, played perfectly by Javier Bardem. He sends his wife to his mother-in-law's home and tries to escape the, and embarks on an escape, leaving his wife Carla (Kelly Macdonald) to escape the pursuit of Chigurh. Because of the string of killings, Chigurh is being tracked by the local sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones. The sheriff becomes somewhat of a narrator and commentator upon the events as they unfold. Chigurh is also followed by a hitman, played by Woody Harrelson, who works for one of the criminal parties left empty handed after the desert shoot out. Much terror follows, making for an intense and suspenseful film that will keep viewers on the edge of their seats.But who and what is Chigurh? Many, in fact the majority, of reviewers see him as a homicidal maniac, as insane, a psychopathic murderer. But he is more than that. He appears in other McCarthy novels as other similar characters. The most obvious is Judge Holden in the frightening novel Blood Meridian. As Harold Bloom points out, this character is also that of Achilles in The Iliad by Homer. He is the embodiment of the dark animalistic homicidal nature of mankind which like tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes, is part of nature, is a force of nature, is often unavoidable, and which follows the rules of natural forces and not the rules of man. He also follows the rules of chance rather than the rules of man, as evidenced by his use of a flip of a coin to determine who may live or die.It is the worn-out and wise Sherriff that senses this in his pursuit of the killer Chigurh and his gathering of the endless clues that point to both the brutality and cruelty of Chigurh. The Sherriff has a dialogue with an estranged relative about the death of one of their ancestors, a lawman, who is killed in the line of duty. The comments of the Sherriff and his dialogue with family members and colleagues, reveals his philosophy that this evil force will burn itself out, reach some point of conclusion, and will move away. This is a very different view of how evil should be dealt with in Western, and specifically American culture, where we must fight evil until the bitter end rather than seeing evil as a storm that will one day move on. The strength of the film is absolute fidelity to this philosophy on the nature of evil.With a compelling story, superb acting, penetrating dialogue, and the ability to challenge thoughtful viewer's preconceived notions, this film is excellent.