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Having put an indelible stamp on the American film
scene with such diverse and challenging films as Raising Arizona, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski, brothers Joel and
Ethan Coen now carry the burden of great expectations. As of late, many
feel that the filmmakers have failed to realize the potential they
exhibited in their earlier work. Garnering near-unanimous praise from
critics when it premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the
Coens’ latest feature, No Country for Old
Men, seems to have an even greater burden to
bear, because it is being touted as the film that will resurrect the
brothers’ careers. That the Coens’ careers require any sort of
resurrection is absurd; they’ve never wavered in presenting their
quirky view of the world with a degree of ironic panache that’s often
imitated but seldom equaled. Country presents a world out of joint, barren of any sort of
moral code other than the most perverse and populated with a cast of
vicious outlaws and outlandish archetypes. As an entry in the crime-film
genre it’s an exemplary example, but I’m not sure it has
anything profound to say about our society, or at least not anything we
haven’t heard before. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, the film begins
as a simple tale of a drug deal gone wrong. Out hunting one day, Vietnam
vet Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across a scene of carnage that
would make Sam Peckinpah blanch. Amid the burned out vehicles and dead
bodies the hunter finds a massive shipment of cocaine and a satchel holding
a little over $2 million. Leaving the drugs but grabbing the cash, Moss
sets out with no other plan than to get as far away with the money as
possible. He knows that someone will be in pursuit but has no way of
knowing just how merciless that pursuer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), is.
Wielding a portable air-compressed spike used to kill cattle, this assassin
displays little emotion, killing people left and right on a whim, often
deciding his victim’s fate with the flip of a coin. On both of their
trails is veteran Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a weary lawman who
senses that he will always be a step behind on this case, despite his best
efforts. All of the Coen trademarks are here, from characters
with bad haircuts to elaborately choreographed sequences in which the
camera captures scenes of horrific violence while gliding across complex
expanses, with silence employed to great effect. Technically the film is
top-notch, especially during a scene in which Moss is chased by a pit bull
across a raging river and later when Chigurh tracks his query on the
nighttime streets of a quiet Texas town. These moments and others are
appropriately tense and help establish a sense of doom that the film
carries with ease. The performances across the board are solid as well.
Brolin continues his exceptional run (American
Gangster, In the
Valley of Elah), and Jones follows up the
year’s best performance (also in Elah) with another solid turn. Woody Harrelson lends some
welcome dark comic relief as the tracker set to bring in Chigurh, and Kelly
Macdonald acquits herself handsomely as Moss’ worried wife. Bardem creates a portrait not simply of rabid
psychosis but of a man on a quest, searching for some great knowledge of
life that can only be witnessed in death. Watch him as he studies his
victims before and after they die and you’ll note a childlike
fascination in the way he observes them as they try to avoid death or meet
it head on. This man is seeking answers to questions that will never be
solved.
The film runs out of steam at the end, and at least
two dialogue-heavy scenes undercut the tension that the have Coens created
so masterfully. However, what is most disturbing about the movie is that it
seems to be saying that evil exists in the world, there’s no true
explanation for it, and sometimes good people are stricken down by it. Country is thematically in
line with the Coens’ other films, and there may be some merit to this
line of thinking, but I was left wanting a bit more when the end credits
rolled.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2007.
