No Country For Old Men (2007)

Directed by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
Written by: Joel Coen/Ethan Coen
Based on book by: Cormac McCarthy

I only saw one new preview this time. Damn me for seeing movies before they come out, I guess.

IN BRUGES–Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are two hitmen…or something…laying low in a small Irish town called Bruges. Unfortunately, there’s fuck-all to do there, so they start sticking out a bit too much. Especially Colin. So their boss (Ralph Fiennes) has to come shut him up. Looks like something I would see, but probably too “trendy” for its own good. And, by “trendy,” I mean “Whoops! Is it not 1995 anymore?”

Oh well.

Now, on to the Coen’s new movie.

West Texas.

To those of us who grew up in Texas, that means many different things. But the main meaning is, “Aw, fuck. Do we have to?”

Having driven through that part of the state just about yearly for the last 10-12 years (always in summer, too), I can tell you that I’ve kind of gotten a feel for it out there. Not as much as someone who has grown up there, by any means. But, most likely, if you grew up there, you’re still there. That’s just how it goes. And it hasn’t changed much at all since 1980 when this film takes place.

The Coen Brothers have, time and time again, shown that they know places better than just about any other filmmakers out there. From Arizona to Fargo, North Dakota to mid-90′s LA, they know exactly how to show that, yes, this is how these people really are/were. By no means is this a caricature. Even when the movie is a caricature, there are people like the ones in the movie.

And No Country For Old Men is probably their crowning achievement in that arena.

Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is the sheriff of…um…whatever county he lives in. (Honestly, it makes no real difference. It’s all the same out there. Trust me.) It’s pretty close to El Paso, though. He knows just about everything there is to know about this place. But sometimes that’s not even enough. After what he saw in Vietnam, things in Texas just don’t look the same.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a good ol’ boy who is just trying to do what he thinks is right in life. He’s got a young wife named Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald hiding her Scottish accent like a champ) and bills no honest man can pay. When he finds the bodies of drug dealers out in the desert, he figures that things are about to change. And when he finds the satchel packed with two million dollars, he KNOWS that things are about to change.

Unfortunately for Llewelyn, there’s someone after him. That someone is the homicidal and overly-thorough Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chigurh will go after him until he’s dead. Yes, he’s after the money, but that’s not all he wants. He wants Llewelyn dead. End of story. And there’s nothing that will stop him.

Like Fargo before, this is the story of a police investigation led by the smartest person in town. Unlike Fargo, though, this movie is more poetic than it is action packed. This is, after all, Cormac McCarthy territory. I’ve only read one book by Mr. McCarthy (All The Pretty Horses, which had a pretty terrible movie based on it), but it did prepare me for this film. I knew that there would be very little dialogue, but what is there is pretty beautiful and thoughtful.

And that’s what I got. There’s little to no music because there’s little to no music in West Texas. There’s little dialogue because these guys aren’t men of words. They are men of…well, kind of little action, too. It’s just too damn hot out there for a lot of action.

No, these men choose their words carefully and know exactly what needs to be said. Even when they are wheelchair bound old men with hundreds of cats running around them, they know what their friends need to hear. And they say it.

The cast is perfect. It goes without saying that Jones is the only man who could play Sheriff Bell. He’s grizzled and intelligent. Hell, the man IS Sheriff Bell. No doubts about it. The only other person who might have been able to do it is Sam Elliott, and I think even he would have handed the role to Tommy. Josh Brolin, who has had a real renaissance lately, is great as a man on the run. He isn’t a bad man by any means. He just wants a better life for himself and his wife and this money may be the only way to do it.

Chigurh, of course, is where this movie is made or broken. And Bardem is amazing. He’s cold. He’s calculating. And he won’t bat an eye at punching the brains out of an old man in a truck just to steal it. He remains one step ahead of Bell basically by sheer force of will. He wants to prove to these people that the inevitable is just that: inevitable. Change is coming and you can’t stop it. And Hell’s comin’ with it.

At the end I heard a lot of “What the fucks?!” throughout the audience. I think anyone who said that…well, this movie wasn’t made for them. It was made for people who wanted more than just action. (Although, there was some pretty intense action here. Not a lot, but just enough.) It was made for people who want to think about their films for a while after.

And it showed me that the Coens haven’t lost it. They just lost there way for a little while.

Watch for Coen stalwart Stephen Root as a CEO drug lord high atop a glass tower. (The only Coen regular that I noticed, unfortunately.) And Richard Kelly regular Beth Grant plays Carla’s mom. Oh yeah, and Woody Harrelson is great in his small role as a fellow hitman.