"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN"
Last night I went to a move theatre for the first time in 4 months. I expected it to be decent. I believe it deserves to win Best Movie of the Year. I must reach far back to remember anything remotely as real as this one. I felt myself operating in two worlds throughout the movie. The visible presence of Chigurh moving around as an effective and twisted predator (almost a hint of evil-incarnate)wasn't as gripping as the unseen forces recognized by some.
This is an ancient tale of warriors and their traditions. Tommy Lee Jones is a 3rd generation lawman in 1980 Texas. At one point he visits his wheelchair bound father shot on duty. Father say he's let go of any intention to seek revenge on his killer. TLJ is surprised. The old man delivers some straight talking Texas wisdom. Father says he hears TMJ is gonna quit-retire. Father says...."listen, what you are facing now, isn't any different than either me or your grandfather dealt with. You think they come when you are ready for them. That's pure vanity. These guys come when they come, without s thought sbout you. You can't stop what is coming at you. It's here, so deal with it. "
TLJ tells his father he doesn't think God thinks much of him. Father says: "You don't know what God thinks. " YLJ responds: "Well,I can't blame him for staying away from my life." Though TLJ is the most principled man around, his real worry is that his world is too unpleasant for God--no offense taken....forgives God despite revelation that his life's prayer that as he got really old he'd feel some of the relief of not being so alone-some sense of the presence of God...isn't not to be. So he just marches into his future.
There is something palpable that hints TLJ assumes he will be walking in Hell for a while. He gets no break till he closes the case on his worst nightmare first. Seems he knows he'll kill the evil bastard and die in the process. He discloses a dream to his wife involving his grandfather.......that seems to suggest.....something like....yeah, it is gonna be a long ugly slog till you pull this off so you can retire......dying before he gets to enjoy any of it.
Sitting with his wife as he remembers his grandfather in his dream, TLJ makes peace with the shit storm ahead. Big surprise. He has to keep moving, near certain he dies in the process but succeeds in protecting his community.....and he'll go through anything to meet up with his warrior grandfather.
THIS IS A REAL MOVIE.
If you see it, watch to see if you notice 2-3 times you as movie watcher could have neutralized the predator so it wasn't left to TLJ to do. Also, the twisted psychopath is commonly called the scariest character to appear in a movie in a very long time. Maybe it was my defense mechanisms or something, but my fantasy was making sure I told the bastard I was totally unimpressed by his sinister behavior and found him boringly predictable....then blow him away just as he flips by being so insulted.
It pulls you in. Lots to learn I felt relieved when I left the movie. People whine about the ending. That was unfortunate. It semed pretty clear how this story was to unfold. And a relief it was in an odd way. Stay safe, and never underestimate your opponent.
REVIEW FROM CHICAGO SUN TIMES I THINK
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
As stomach-churning a suspense exercise as the cinema has seen since the salad days of Hitchcock, Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men is also a profoundly spooky evocation of apocalypse, American style. Going from strength to strength whether they're depicting grisly violence, mordant irony, or tragic poignancy, the picture represents a high-water mark for the Coens. It's their best picture, and could well turn out to be the best picture of the year. Whatever tops it — and as of this writing there aren't too many likely contenders to do so out there — is going to have to be very, very good indeed.
Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, the West Texas–set picture kicks off with grim, sere landscapes, setting the tableaus for the gruesome introduction of its villain, a mysterious psychopath name Anton Chigurh with a novel method of blowing door locks off and human brains out. Bardem's magnificently creepy Chigurh breaks out of police custody in a scene that will have most viewers gouging the stuffing out of their armrests; whatever this guy is after, we know right away that he's not going to let anything impede his getting it. After this, affable would-be deer gunner Llewellyn Moss (Brolin), out on an unsuccessful hunt, happens on the human-and-animal-corpse-strewn aftermath of a drug deal gone very bad. Sure enough — Brolin drawls a perfect "Yeah" as he makes the discovery — there's a satchel full of loot on the dusty scene, and Moss makes off with it to his trailer park. Chigurh, whose hobby of deciding whether or not to kill someone based on a coin flip is one of his lesser eccentricities (and whose look recalls that of Lon Chaney in London After Midnight — no, really), is of course the man with a claim on the money. The often brutal cat-and-mouse game that ensues between the two characters affords the Coens the opportunity to create some of the most imaginative and excruciating suspense set pieces of their, or anybody else's, career. Tommy Lee Jones, whose character sets the film's tone with an elegiac voice-over at the beginning, is frequently hilarious as laconic (what else?) sheriff Ed Tom Bell, but it's his character who carries the moral weight of the story, and the decisions he makes as he comes to the end of the line, and a potential confrontation with pure evil, is what finally gives the film an enigmatic, haunting quality. Mulling over the story's climactic tragedy, Bell and another law officer discuss how the world's going to hell in a hand basket ever since kids started dying their hair green and stopped saying "sir" and "ma'am"; but a little later, visiting an old man who's both kin and a mentor to him, Bell is told "What you're seeing…is nothing new…. You can't stop what's coming." No you can't, and this movie aims to make you feel the truth of that statement in your bones.
Woody Harrelson as an investigator who fancies himself something of an expert on Chigurh, and Kelly MacDonald as Brolin's sweet, trusting wife, add fantastic texture and depth to this twisted, can't-look-away tale. (As do Garret Dillahunt as Bell's slightly dim deputy, and Tess Harper as Bell's wife.) Some rumblings are going on in both mainstream and internet movie-musing circles about the ending of the picture, which turns ruminant, elides what some might consider major high points of the story, and goes for something deeper and more thoroughly unsettling than the filmmakers have ever attempted before. (And also, I ought to say, hews very closely to McCarthy's own ending.) On first viewing I wasn't so sure about it myself. Second time around, I think it's perfect. And I think No Country is a picture to which I can apply that very vexed word "masterpiece" with no hesitation or compunction.
— Glenn Kenny
Tags: Movie Book Warrior Evil Dr Kevin Keough Warrior Traditions
