Retro-Review: No Country For Old Men

Note: This review was written by me before the 2008 Oscars for the website "The Filmphile".


Coming off Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, it seemed as if Joel and Ethan Coen had become victims of their own filmmaking sensibilities and style. Both films, while entertaining in their own right and displaying typical Coen hilarity, displayed a feeling of familiarity. The quickly-paced, cleverly-witted dialogue and outlandish comedic characters which had inhabited Coen comedies from Raising Arizona to O Brother, Where Art Thou? were present in each picture and succeeded in their respective roles. But while Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers were enjoyable films, they certainly did not rank among the greats of the Coen canon. There was a feeling emitting from these films which seemed to scream “This has been done before.” The Coens most certainly still had the ability to make compelling tales featuring their warped spin on humanity. But where were these films and why weren’t the Coens making them? These guys, after all, were the filmmaking duo behind such dramatic marvels as Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, and The Man Who Wasn’t There. Surely they had more intense dramatic yarns with which to enthrall unsuspecting audiences. With the release of No Country For Old Men, the brothers’ first film in three years, such grievances have been diminished with a vengeance. Not only is their adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel an almost unanimous darling of film critics, it has also been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor and Best Director and is the favorite to win the coveted top prize of Best Picture of the year.
Not counting the Odyssey-inspired O Brother, No Country For Old Men is the first film by the Coens to be adapted from an existing published work. Perhaps the use of an already created story as the basis for their new film gave the Coens the needed creative energy to mold a fresh cinematic narrative. Working to adapt a novel into a screenplay instead of creating an original script definitely seemed to present them with the tools necessary to get out of the creative stalemate which plagued their two previous films. And anyone who has both read the book and seen the movie will tell you that the Coens have done one of the best adaptations of a novel into a film in recent memory. Almost following the book completely in terms of the use of character dialogue and structure, the film is an adaptive triumph. But the real triumph here is how much the Coens managed to leave their own unique filmmaking fingerprints all over the picture’s characters, dialogue, and story. That story is the heart of what makes No Country prevail as a film.
The story concerns three supporting male characters and their interactions with one another in Texas in the year 1980. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), while hunting one day on the Texas plains, discovers a drug deal gone sour as he comes across a slew of destroyed vehicles which contain murdered inhabitants. Discovering a briefcase filled with money at the scene, Llewelyn boldly takes the lucrative satchel and returns home to his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) before going on the run with the money. Little does he know that the very incantation of evil is lurking across Texas carrying with him a blank stare and a sinister air tank. This killer with his own code of ethics is Anton Chigurh and it becomes his mission to recapture the money and kill Llewelyn. Portrayed with ominous calm by the superb Javier Bardem, Chigurh treks across Texas, killing all who get in his way of finding Llewelyn. While the chase of Moss and Chigurh leaps to monumental proportions, sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) emerges as the law enforcement presence trying to find Llewelyn before he meets the fate of Chigurh’s previous victims.
This story allows the actors in the film to create incredible performances and the Coens to execute tense sequences which strain the audience’s nerves. Case in point is the scene in which Bardem’s Chigurh stops at a service station and speaks with the station’s attendant. At this point, we know that Chigurh is a psychopathic killer, as he has already choked a policeman to death with a pair of handcuffs and used his cow-disposing air tank (which swiftly shoots out a steel cylinder into the head of his victims) on unsuspecting victims. Given this, as Chigurh continues to badger the poor attendant, we begin to suspect that he will murder this man for no reason other than to satisfy some sick desire deep within himself. Then, the Coens throw us with Chigurh’s fate-deciding coin toss which the attendant correctly calls completely unaware (but very aware to us) that his call has spared his life. It is a horribly tense moment and one which no doubt found many a person sweating bullets of fear. This is also the scene which defines Javier Bardem’s amazing, nominated performance. His Chigurh is one of the creepiest, most terrifying representations of evil to inhabit a movie in years and ranks as one of the best villains in movie history. With his now-famous haircut, dead-eyed stare, and calm voice, Bardem creates Chigurh as a man who seems to roam the earth only to fulfill his sadistic desire to take life away from others. It is no accident that we never really here who has hired Chigurh to track the missing money and in a way it does not really matter. The money is merely a MacGuffin in the story, the device which gives Chigurh a reason to track Moss down and kill him. He has no real desire to find the money- he just wants blood.
It is this sick desire of Chigurh, and the death that he leaves in his path, which provides No Country For Old Men with the crux of its message. Ed Tom, in a understated, subdued performance by Jones, is a man who has been around Texas for a long time and has been a policeman for even longer. Faced with investigating the terror of the mysterious Chigurh and finding the missing Moss, he represents a force of good coming to grips with the horror which has come to inhabit the country he has for so long protected. He symbolizes an older generation facing the fact that the modern world is changing and it is not changing for the better. These are not pleasant thoughts and the Coens do not sugarcoat their message. We feel for Ed Tom. We see the anguish, fear, and apprehension on his face as he muddles over these very thoughts in his mind and with others. He is a good man doing good deeds who is trapped in a deteriorating hell hole. Much credit must be given to Jones who gives Ed Tom the vulnerability and honesty that few other actors could contribute to the character.
As far as the other performances go, Josh Brolin is magnificent as Moss, as is Kelly Macdonald as his wife. Although Bardem received the acting nomination, the truth is that Brolin, Jones, and Macdonald all could have been nominated for the film. They are all that good. But the main stars of this film are the Coens and they have succeeded admirably with No Country. For instance, they have triumphed in their accuracy in adapting the novel while simultaneously imprinting their own style onto the film. With the movie, the Coens have given a face to McCarthy’s characters and a beautiful visual representation of the book’s happenings which fits nicely alongside their work in previous films. The movie is often times darkly humorous and the characters speak with a regional vernacular which has been a part of Coen films like O Brother, Raising Arizona, and Fargo. But while those films rely heavily on dialogue, No Country is noticeably a quiet film. Spans of time go by in which no dialogue is spoken and music is obviously not a factor here. It is a much more stoic piece than previous Coen films, its closest relative in this department perhaps being the melancholy and subdued The Man Who Wasn’t There. The film also features breathtaking cinematography by longtime collaborator Roger Deakins. His framing of the desolate Texas landscape elicits images of his masterful work in Fargo. Here, instead of photographing the frigid, white setting of Minnesota, he offers us the brown, dreary, and sometimes empty scenery of Texas. In both Fargo and No Country for Old Men, those specific settings allow for the development of tales concerning murder, greed, and loss. But Fargo concludes rather optimistically, ending with the realization that Frances McDormand’s character will be having a child soon and thus bringing some sort of pure and innocent good into a corrupt world. The same cannot be said of the already love-it or don’t-understand-it-and-think-its-stupid ending of No Country. Ed Tom’s disclosure of his dream to his wife, preceded by the escape of the wounded Chigurh, leaves us shaken and fearful for Ed Tom and his fellow generational compatriots who must face the changing, though not for the better, modern world.
The notion of calling a movie “perfect” is not something to be taken lightly. There have been only a few of what I would call “perfect” films which I have seen in this decade. I would certainly file No Country For Old Men into that category. Perhaps their greatest achievement, the Coen brothers have crafted a masterpiece worthy of the highest praise the Academy can offer and the best compliment this reviewer can give. It is the best movie of 2007.



Two years later after this review, I find myself liking the film even more. A note must be made about the scene in the film in which Ed Tom visits his uncle and reveals his doubts on God and his view on how his life, and the world, is tiring him- why he is over-matched. This is one of the greatest scenes out of the last ten years of American movies. No Country For Old Men ranks as the #2 best American movie that I saw during the last decade.