No Country For Old Men

Year of Release: 2007
Genre: Drama / Action
Rating: R for strong graphic violence and language.
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald

Date Of Review: February 2008

“No Country For Old Men” is “The Good The Bad And The Ugly” for the new millennium except with a hidden agenda. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is the Good, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is the Bad and Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is the Ugly. The hidden agenda is the Tommy Lee Jones character. He is not really in the film in the capacity that you would expect. That is the hidden undercurrent of “No Country For Old Men”. The Tommy Lee Jones character is really monitoring the case from a far, never really a part of it, he is never really meant to sort out the whole mess.  “No Country For Old Men” is a violent, often-confronting, modern-day western with dashes of sardonic wit. The film is competently made in all areas, acting, script, direction, cinematography etc. It plays out at times like a mystery thriller, a cops-and-robbers film, a chase film, a complex look at a psychopathic killer, an in-depth study of the human condition or a damning view of the society we live in.

The plot sees hunter, Josh Brolin, stumble upon some dead drug runners and $2 million in cash. The hunter takes the cash while, psychopathic hit-man, Javier Bardem, also wants the loot. So the hunter becomes the prey but in a sudden twist of events the hunter almost becomes the predator and so on. Add to the mix Tommy Lee Jones as the ageing sheriff who is trying to sort out his own life and his retirement.  If you want further insight into the background of the Tommy Lee Jones story thread maybe check out “The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada” (2005). He plays almost the same character in that film and I am sure that watching that one back to back with “No Country” would make for a highly entertaining double-bill.

What’s amazing about “No Country For Old Men” is that the supporting cast more-than-match the leads, word for word, in every single frame of the film. There is an intriguing set-piece in which Bardem confronts an old man in a gas station and intimidates him into calling the flip of a coin in which his life is at stake. The old guy’s performance is nothing short of brilliant. The woman at the front desk in the trailer park is hilarious in her confrontation with Bardem, when she refuses to supply him with personal information on any of the guests staying at the park. Woody Harrelson is also outstanding in his turn as the hired gun, Carson Wells, but its wheel chair bound, Barry Corbin of “Northern Exposure” fame who has a scene-stealer with Tommy Lee Jones at the end of the film that is nothing short of captivating. I suppose you could also say that Bardem’s unique armory of weapons have supporting roles too. One is a cattle gun which he uses on his victims and the other is a compressed oxygen cylinder which doubles as a nifty door opener as well as a killing device.    

Should we always be spoon fed a traditional cut and dry Hollywood ending? This is debatable. If we invest $10 of our hard-earned cash and 2 hours of our time into a film, it is usually common decency for the filmmaker to give us some sort of satisfactory resolution at the end, right? Nothing in “No Country For Old Men” is predictable and just like the film’s tagline suggests “There Are No Clean Getaways”. When I left the theatre I heard comments ranging from “That ending sucks” to “What happened to the wife?” to “What did the sheriff say at the end?”.  “No Country For Old Men” is a freaky little film, with a freaky ending, made by 2 freaky brothers (Similar comments were echoed from Josh Brolin at the SAG awards) Is the Oscars bold enough to go freaky this year?…..only time will tell. In the meantime, viewers are still looking for answers to the film’s ending so I suspect that sales of Cormac McCarthy’s novel on which the film is based will go through the roof.

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