No Country for Old Men

Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald Directed by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen Runtime: 122 min. Rated: R Release date: November 21, 2007 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
7.9 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 9.7 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 5.7 Funny . . . . . . . . 7.8

The Hooksexup Review

You know the Coen Brothers are back on top of their game when they somehow derive maximum tension from the banal image of a candy wrapper slowly uncrinkling on a dusty countertop. No Country for Old Men may be the boys' first literary adaptation — most of its distinctive, prolix dialogue ("I think we're lookin' at more than one fracas"), I was surprised to find, comes straight from Cormac McCarthy's source novel — but it's also as close as they've yet come to recapturing Blood Simple's virtuoso atmosphere of indolent mayhem. The film is essentially just one long chase sequence, as impulsive outlaw Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who's stumbled onto a briefcase full of drug money, hotfoots it across rural Texas, with stone psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in ice-cold pursuit. But the story's simplicity finds a thrilling counterpoint in a series of wordless, impossibly tense set pieces, conceived and directed with sadistic precision and bone-dry wit. This is the rare movie so moment-to-moment riveting that you're sometimes in danger of forgetting to breathe.

For most of its two-hour running time, No Country for Old Men jangles your Hooksexups so expertly that there's no time to consider what the film might actually be about. But adapting any novel involves making sacrifices, and that's doubly true in the case of an author as philsophically inclined as McCarthy. To their credit, the Coens make a concerted effort to preserve some of the novel's bone-weary pessimism, most of which derives from the narration of a passive third character, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played here by Tommy Lee Jones). In the end, though, I suspect that it's just too deeply encoded in McCarthy's eloquent prose to survive the transition. The film's abrupt, deliberately unresolved ending, which is quite faithful to the book, comes across less here as an elegy for civilization than as a mere failure of imagination. In a way, Joel and Ethan have succeeded all too well — they've made such a twisted corker of a suspense movie that their belated stab at profundity feels ad hoc, as if imposed from without. But it's not as if we're drowning in corkers at the moment, so let's not be overly demanding. — Mike D'Angelo

Other Reviews

Variety
Todd McCarthy
"Cormac McCarthy's bracing and brilliant novel is gold for the Coen brothers, who have handled it respectfully but not slavishly, using its built-in cinematic values while cutting for brevity and infusing it with their own touch. . . one of the their very best films, a bloody classic of its type destined for acclaim."
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Slant Magazine
Nick Schager
"Their cynical streak finds its perfect complement in McCarthy's gloomy tale of Biblical-scale chaos in 1980 Texas, and yet the Coens nonetheless locate the black comedy hidden within the acclaimed author's terse, punctuation-sparse prose."
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Your Reviews

I'll call it friend-o. You're last act ruins the whole movie.

Great characters, dialogue, locations, all inside of a simple, straightforward and compelling plot.

However, the story unexpectedly switches from a thriller to a character study in the last act. The relief from the suspense, the satisfaction of victory or the tragedy of failure are deprived from us, and naturally, it is disappointing.

Apparently, the Coen brothers were being true to the book. I say that was a mistake.

There were certain elements that seemed like they didn't know what they were doing.

The protagonist gets killed off screen and not by the antagonist. The viewer either wants the satisfaction of his success or the tragedy of his demise. We were given neither.

The Woody Harrelson character finds the sought after money effortlessly and implausibly. Not that he couldn't have found the money, but it could have been done believably. As far as the viewer is concerned, Woody was walking down the sidewalk and happened to step up onto the barrier for a view into the brush below for no reason, only to see the lost money.

Tommy Lee Jones goes to the hotel where the hero was murdered. We see the villain hiding in the shadows. We expect a confrontation. Then, somehow, someway, the villain is not in the room. How? What happened?

The damsel in distress doesn't run when the villain comes for her. Why? I hear it was because she just lost her mother and husband and given up. It wasn't presented that way. It seemed like the plot needed her to have a conversation with the villain, so she did.

As one viewer muttered at the end, "didn't show me anything I didn't already know."

Interesting point. Too-often, life appears as meaningless random acts, often violent, that we have no control over. There is nothing wrong with a movie that portrays that, but the filmmakers needs to manage expectations or suffer those comments. We were setup for a big payoff, and got none. A filmmaker can only expect disappointment when they do that.

I have no idea what the conversation Tommy Lee Jones had with the old man in the wheel chair meant. Much less, who the guy in the wheel chair was or even follow what they were saying.

The movie is receiving across the board great reviews. Pretty much everything about the film is great except for what I mention above. And the problems above are so fundamental, so foundational, it makes everything else half as good as it could be.

posted by mbannonb on 4/18/2008 10:46:19 PM
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Aside from the screenplay (adapted from a novel by Cormac McCarthy), which is a study in economical plotting, the Coens (sharing directorial responsibilities) are back at the top of their game here, thanks in large part to Roger Deakins, who makes a painterly masterpiece of the big Southern sky. He's also got a way with faces -- especially Jones's, an arid, craggy road map that's seen far too much and done far too little about it. Look for Oscar nominations for the film, screenplay, direction, Jones, Brolin (who's never been more effective), and, if luck holds out, Bardem -- although the Academy has never looked kindly on baddies this bad.

posted by filmington on 11/26/2007 8:50:15 AM
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