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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: No Country for Old Men

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#1 of 1 Posted 10/24/07 10:13 PM

From harveykarten Posts 744 Last Nov-19
To All [Msg # 22711.1 ]

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Miramax Films
Grade: A-
Directed by:    Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Written By:   Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, from Cormac McCarthy's novel
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Garret
Dillahunt, Tess Harper, Barry Corbin, Stephen Root, Rodger Boyce, Beth Grant, Ana Reeder
Screened at: Dolby 24, NYC, 10/24/07
Opens: November 9, 2007

Whenever a crime wave occurs in an American town, journalists like to nickname the area “Dodge City.” Though the media tend to hype events to maximize their audience, in this case they understate the horrors. Crimes that occur in recent decades, say, in Texas, make Dodge City shootouts look like an innocent game of hide-and-seek by comparison. The reason? Drugs. The billions that are made through the illicit drug trade can turn many an offender into a killing machine, determined to track down and execute any members of the gang who try to steal all the loot for themselves and, in the case of the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men,” turn an already psychopathic villain into a mass murderer. Before exploring that territory, Joel Coen and his brother Ethan Coen had turned out one quirky film after other such as “Blood Simple,” “Raising Arizona,” “Miller’s Crossing” and some that have been generally panned by critics like “The Big Lebowski,” “Barton Fink” and “The Hudsucker Proxy,” the last of which was called “ a travesty” by noted critic David Thomson. “No Country for Old Men,” however, is a near masterwork, a philosophic, decidedly violent comment on American civilization gone sour, its rotten elements so baffling to police authorities that they feel overwhelmed, outgunned. The particular arm of the law in this film is old-timer Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who has seen his area of West Texas become so bloodied that he is driven to retirement.

Adapted by the Coen brothers from Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling novel, this movie features a sociopathic villain intelligent enough to torture his victims by psychological manipulation. He rivets the audience. The great Spanish actor, Javier Bardem, serves as the Coens’ strong presence in El Paso, Texas (actually filmed in New Mexico), a drug baron who goes after gang members who have ripped him off. His principal concern is getting back the $2.4 million that they stole, a fortune found by accident taken by a heretofore honest man, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) living in a trailer with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald). The story is a cat-and-mouse game, as Moss, having accidentally discovered some dead bodies with a satchel of hundred-dollar bills, determines to give the wife he loves a better life than the one she now has as a Wal-Mart’s clerk.

As photographed by Roger Deakins, who contrasts the bright, 90-degree western outdoors with the sinister shade of cheap motels, “No Country for Old Men” plays like both a classic American western and a Greek tragedy–the latter motif suggested by forces that are fiercely determined to get their way while mere mortals, the legal authorities, can do little about them. “No Country” is set in 1980 rather than the present because the eighties were the decade that drug traffic in some states turned its perpetrators into savages and began to overwhelm our judicial system. When a naive deputy turns his back on his suspect, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), Chigurh overcomes him, strangling the man with his handcuffs. Using what looks to all like an oxygen tent for sufferers of lung disease but is actually a cattle stun gun, he kills a driver, takes his car, and heads off in search of Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who has taken the cash and is now on the run from the psychopathic criminal. Quite a few dead bodies later, Moss is chased into a river by men who set their pit bull on him, getting away by shooting the dog just as the animal leaps at his throat–one of the movie’s more stunning images.

While the picture is loaded with vivid and startlingly brutal action, the stage belongs at times to the sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who spends more time philosophizing and telling stories with morals than in his unsuccessful attempts to capture the arch-criminal. Still, Bardem is the scene-stealer throughout, speaking calmly in the monotone described by McCarthy in the novel, never raising his voice since his unusually powerful weapons do all the serious talking he needs. He goads the owner of a store, allowing the man to escape with his life if the elderly fellow makes the correct guess on a coin toss. He challenges one other major character in the same way and catches up with a brazen Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), who is hired by the rightful owner of the money to recover it.

With stunning New Mexico photography, some moments of almost unbearable suspense, and Javier Bardem’s performance as the scariest villain of 2007, “No Country for Old Men” will change the minds of audience members who found much of the Coens’ previous works too loosely structured and far too precious.

Rated R.    122 minutes   © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: No Country for Old Men

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