After many forgettable recent tries by the Coen Brothers—who together have a filmography that is peerless in terms of maintaining a signature style in a wide array of films—they finally hit another bullseye that is easily their best since the much-loved Fargo, and it’s one heck of a bullseye. You can always tell a Coen Bros film by the humorous twang in the dialogue, even in a film as deadly serious and suspenseful as No Country for Old Men. Joel and Ethan have found the perfect blend of hardcore suspense and screwball humor, if such a thing is possible.
What we have here is a story of opportunity and choices, divided between three central characters. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a still-young Vietnam veteran who stumbles into the aftermath of a drug deal, where he finds a lot of bodies, a truck bed full of heroin, and an attaché of two million dollars. This puts him in the crosshairs of Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a ruthless killer who’ll stop at nothing to get that attaché back. Llewelyn could’ve left the money behind, and throughout the film he is faced with the choice to abandon the money several times, but doesn’t. It’s a choice made when opportunity presents itself, as if he’s fighting fate to take control of his own life. On the opposite, Chigurh likes to play with fate. Sometimes he tosses a coin to determine a person’s life. It looks like he’s submitting his will to chance, but if you think about it, it’s still his choice whether or not to just kill somebody or give them an opportunity with the coin (he does both in the film).
No Country for Old Men is bleak. Set in the 80s, the film deals with the growing turbulence of sadistic violence and sense of nihilism in America, or so the way it is voiced in the film by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), our third man. He reads a newspaper story about a murderous couple in California and figures that the world had gone off the deep end. Yet an older man later tells him that the world has always been that way. From this, we can deduce that it’s not the world that’s growing bleaker, but it’s people that grow distaste for the world as they witness more in life. Sheriff Bell figures out Llewelyn’s situation and tries to stop it, but he’s always one step behind him and Chigurh. His role as a watcher almost paints him as helpless and left out.
Why else, when he thinks that danger is close by, would he stride on unprotected, and is disappointed when there is no death staring him back? Still, it is interesting to note that his profession practically requires him to be a trailer. After all, he usually arrives at a crime scene after the crime has been committed.
As mentioned earlier, the Coens blend suspense and humor masterfully. The film, when not shaving your nails off by egging you to chew on them, is surprisingly hilarious (or not so surprising, if you know the Coens). In Chigurh’s early appearance, his interaction with a gas station attendant starts off establishing him as the unstable creepy psychopath, only to end with a really comical expression and line from Bardem: "Don\'t put the quarter in your pocket, because then it\'ll just become a simple coin. Which it is." It helps to level the dark and uncompromising tone that they’ve chosen for the film.
Instead of focusing on plot—it is a very simple chase format—No Country for Old Men is concerned with the details. How Llewelyn carefully hides his money, how Chigurh breaks into homes, or how he leaves no bullets behind in the people he kills… these are things that are entertaining to see even when they don’t figure too much into the story. Like Llewelyn, we’re sucked into having to participate in the full experience, not just the money shots. Deliberately, it milks every corner of intrigue from the situation, then slowly builds into truly pulse-testing action sequences.
Save for the tremendously affecting ending monologue delivered by Tommy Lee Jones, the film sadly trips on a rug in its third act. Following the exciting second act, all that tense build-up leads to a dead conclusion. There’s a jump in time near the end of the film, right before the climax, and starts back up right after. It’s not as if you’re missing any vital information, and the coda is quite good, but the experience is not unlike having your lover jump out of bed right before the peak, only to come back and throttle you about what your relationship means to you—it’s kind of puzzling, and it’s understandably frustrating.
However, it is appropriate to Sheriff Bell’s concerns, and it’s consistent with how he always arrives a little too late. Even without the satisfaction of a more finite ending, though, it’s hard to dismiss the brilliant, masterful, and all around perfection that make up most of the film.
"No Country for Old Men" opens November 9, 2007 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. Written by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Starring Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly MacDonald, Stephen Root, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson.
