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 Return to Form! Aug 07, 2008
I was taken aback by how interesting and excellent this film was. I saw several reviews over the course of the last year that claimed No Country for Old Men was a disappointment. I found it to be anything but that. Honestly, at just over 2 hours long, I wished its length was double. Its ending may not be what viewers desire but it was appropriate given the nature of the characters. I found The Ladykillers very poor so I see this movie as definitely being a return to form for the Coen brothers who, next to Martin Scorsese, are the best directors of our era (in my opinion). Yes, Josh Brolin was excellent, yes, Tommy Lee Jones was excellent, but this fellow Javier Bardem was absolutely superb. I had never heard of him previously, but he played the perfect villain--a mixture of subtlety and aggression. The guy is scarier than DeNiro was in Cape Fear. He made the film for me, but then again, the Cormac McCarthy plot would have won me over anyway.
 Use rawhide to keep your teeth grinding in check from all the suspense Aug 06, 2008
Joel & Ethan Coen's latest is easily an improvement on their sorrier, more recent offerings (Intolerable Cruelty, Ladykillers). But it's harder for me to tell you if it's the brothers' strongest since their magnum opus, The Big Lebowski (I at least half-liked O Brother, Where Art Thou? & The Man Who Wasn't There).
No Country For Old Men comes up short for me in one crucial area: its third act. This is one of those movies that doesn't really have a climax and yet putters along anyway for quite awhile before finally exiting stage right. The wind-up is unsatisfying and seems like it's married to the source novel too close for comfort (though I haven't read the book to be sure).
The dialogue remains tight and clever throughout but I didn't feel like the movie really delivered any kind of payoff. It's fine for a film to gloss over what would normally be the logical endpoint of its story and search for a higher meaning, but I didn't feel the Coens achieved this. A rewrite of the ending would have elevated the whole film to another level, because the rising momentum of its tension was strong and well-earned from the beginning. This is a composition that's quiet (almost no background music whatsoever) and still. Characters talk only when they need to. The excellent Roger Deakins cinematography is draped in shadows, looking natural yet striking. There's no special f/x sleight of hand or plot twist trickery to distract you from the meat and potatoes script. Like the Bourne spy yarns, you're shown all the steps a character takes to pull off an escape, retrieve a briefcase under siege, or blow up a car without explosives.
Until the last 20 minutes or so you're not left with any lingering questions and there aren't any plotholes to speak of. It's not a weak, messy finale so much as it feels deflated and almost dull compared to what came before. Thrillers like this one are most memorable when they save the best for last.
Tommy Lee Jones is actually the star of this, not Josh Brolin (who still gave a captivating performance despite getting shortchanged near the end). Tommy Lee is a towering actor as usual and Javier Bardem hits all the right creepy notes as the existentialist killer hunting down Brolin (he manages to be a real world version of Two-Face in his coin toss scenes).
This is definitely one of the better movies of the last few years but not good enough to win my vote for 2007's best. I'd recommend seeing it eventually but unless you can figure out a better explanation for the end than I could come up with, you also might think it falls short of greatness.
No Country for Old Men Aug 05, 2008
I put off watching this for quite a while because of the mediocre reviews. I'd read Cormac McCarthy's book and didn't want to be disappointed by the film version. Having now watched the film I'm baffled by the reviews. The novel is bleak, but probably the most accessible of his books. The title really sums it up. Set in 1980s Texas, in the early stages of the cross-border drug trade, the ruthless, often sadistic and pointless violence of the new criminal class has rendered the old fashioned, comparatively decent law enforcers redundant, baffled and powerless. Hence, No Country for Old Men.
I was pleasantly surprised by the film. It portrays the events of the book perfectly, almost scene for scene, in all its bleak pointlessness. That is the point! The characterisation and acting are superb; the locations and sets are wonderful. The first hour or so is one of the most convincing and entertaining pieces of cinema I've ever seen. If it then tails off slightly it is the fault of the book rather than the film. McCarthy's outlook is so bleak that nobody ever gets out alive or undamaged - there are no happy endings in this story. The main character has no redeeming qualities, which, for me, was the one weakness of the book.
Javier Bardem's character, Chigurh, was a kind of human Terminator who didn't quite `belong' here. Most of the characters in the story were bad or corrupt in some way, their purpose to illustrate the new, ruthless criminality, but they would not go out of their way to hunt and kill people who were not obstructing them, not really anything to do with them. Chigurh did not need to be quite so psychotically determined, killing even those who could not possibly harm him. McCarthy could have made his point without leaving quite so large a trail of dead bodies. That, to me, is his weakness - he sees no chinks of light anywhere - they exist, but he doesn't see them. I also thought Bardem, although brilliant, was miscast. The haircut from hell didn't help.
Again, this is the fault of the book. Although the story could have had happier outcomes for some of the characters without detracting from its purpose, the Coens, once they had decided to film it, could hardly have messed with the work of such a prominent writer. They did a brilliant job, retaining a very black humour throughout, although those appalled by the violence may have missed it. With slight reservations, a great film.
Satisfying Adaptation Of the Novel Aug 05, 2008
It's a rare occurrence indeed when a film adaptation lives up to its source material, but with No Country for Old Men, Ethan and Joel Coen have done right by Cormac McCarthy.
In McCarthy's novel, he is terse and economic with details. The book moves at an incredibly frantic pace and he shows no mercy to any of his characters. Often violence is implied and sometimes even painfully described. The Coens made sure not to deviate from this established tone.
Because they work in a visual medium, the Coens not only had to capture the essence of No Country for Old Men, but they also had to literally show us what these characters looked like, all the way from their faces to their boots. McCarthy allowed the reader to fill in quite a few visual and auditory gaps, but the Coens had no such luxury.
And so, in my mind, we were awfully lucky the Coens found the perfect Moss and Chigurh in Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. Brolin oozed the silent, capable resourcefulness of Moss while Bardem took a character who had thus been sparsely described and created cinematic gold.
Chigurh is unsettling in the novel, but in the movie the Coens and Bardem make him a terrifying study of subtle villainy. I don't think Bardem raised his voice even once in the movie, but his empty facial expressions and slight voice inflections were more nerve-wracking than any chest-thumping or profanity-laced tirades. Too often villains simply become the reverse of the protagonist. Not in No Country for Old Men. Not by a long shot. Each character is his own man, far and away.
From a cinematic point of view, the Coens were marvelous with their choice of shots, locations, costumes, props, and acting directions. There's a particular scene near the beginning of the movie where a man is strangled while laying on his back upon the floor. Graphic, yes, but what impressed me to no end is the fact that the Coens made sure the man's boot heels left hundreds of scuff marks on the tiled floor. That sort of attention to detail is much appreciated.
Some may feel the Coens offered too violent of a film. I think it's important to note that they embellished nothing from the novel. The movie is one of the purest adaptations I've ever seen, and McCarthy wrote one very violent, unapologetic, merciless novel.
I personally am grateful to the Coens for taking a masterfully written novel and treating its subject matter just as the author intended. It would seem that because they converted literary art to true cinematic art, they were amply rewarded.
~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume II: A Collection of Short Stories
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An explanation for the ending: an implied scene Aug 05, 2008
The ending of the film should be understood in the context of preceding scenes, and in particular, the scene just prior to the final scenes of the film - in the motel - where Anton is hiding behind the door with a loaded gun, and the Sheriff holsters his gun and sits on the bed. This scene ends with the Sheriff noticing, and focusing on, the coin left on the floor by Anton. The focus on the coin incidentally, was the Coen Bros. clue to the viewer. This scene implies that Anton 'gets the drop' on the Sheriff, and gives him a chance to escape by calling the coin toss correctly. This then explains the ensuing scenes where the Sheriff discusses his retirement plans to his friend and his wife, and recounts his dark dream to his wife; a dream of a dead father and mortality. A dispirited Sheriff has realized he is no match for Anton. Hence the film's title: "No Country For Old Men". This implied scene underscores the greatness of this film. Most films, particularly Hollywood films, usually make everything obvious to the viewer, leaving no room for thinking by viewers. The Coen Bros. have elevated film-making to new heights. On another level, they have elevated the notion of randomness or chance in the world, to a primary theme, in this film, as commented on elsewhere by some contributors. It seems that Cormac McCarthy, (the author of the novel on which the film is based) had been reading the works of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his discourse on randomness/chance in "The Black Swan" and "Fooled By Randomness". The Talebian view of the world, seems to have permeated popular culture - note its use (the coin toss by Dent) in "The Dark Knight' as well.
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