Movie Review: No Country for Old Men
It all comes down to choices and one's own notion of fate for the tense, superb No Country for Old Men.
Javier Bardem plays the defiantly un-sweet Anton Chigurh (read: Sugar), the monomaniacal, unapologetic treasure re-collector. Chigurh is written, and Bardem plays the character as a colorless robot, there's no angle or history with Chirguh, there's no understanding; the most insight the audience receives about him comes from Woody Harrelson's character's description, the only notable Chigurh characteristic his awful haircut. (Bardem strikes into our western film awareness ten years ago with Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh, as the cuckolded, paraplegic ex-cop. Because of No Country, he's now an Academy Award winner.)
Josh Brolin, who plays the opposing yet equally myopic Llewelyn Moss, is the sympathetic protagonist for whom the audience has invested. Brolin, with a checkered past himself, seems readily believable as the trailer-dwelling, independent, enduring, playful guy saddled by his conscience. Moss's fate is tied to his decision to abide his good intentions and head back to the scene of the crime, yet he defies the ending the hurricane Chigurh predicts for him, which may be the biggest surprise of the movie.
But it's Tommy Lee Jones, with his cracklingly aged face and distinct, authentic Texas voice that provides No Country the emotional balance between the tension of pursuit and pursuer. As Jones' Sheriff Bell, who quietly contemplates his lot in his professional life, and perhaps even struggles a bit, where his calm, no-pistol-needed mentality belies the growing violence of the border drug trade, the Texas where there are "kids with green hair and bones in their noses walking the streets," are the Coen Brothers too questioning where they fit at the midpoints of their own lives and careers?
Javier Bardem plays the defiantly un-sweet Anton Chigurh (read: Sugar), the monomaniacal, unapologetic treasure re-collector. Chigurh is written, and Bardem plays the character as a colorless robot, there's no angle or history with Chirguh, there's no understanding; the most insight the audience receives about him comes from Woody Harrelson's character's description, the only notable Chigurh characteristic his awful haircut. (Bardem strikes into our western film awareness ten years ago with Pedro Almodóvar's Live Flesh, as the cuckolded, paraplegic ex-cop. Because of No Country, he's now an Academy Award winner.)
Josh Brolin, who plays the opposing yet equally myopic Llewelyn Moss, is the sympathetic protagonist for whom the audience has invested. Brolin, with a checkered past himself, seems readily believable as the trailer-dwelling, independent, enduring, playful guy saddled by his conscience. Moss's fate is tied to his decision to abide his good intentions and head back to the scene of the crime, yet he defies the ending the hurricane Chigurh predicts for him, which may be the biggest surprise of the movie.
But it's Tommy Lee Jones, with his cracklingly aged face and distinct, authentic Texas voice that provides No Country the emotional balance between the tension of pursuit and pursuer. As Jones' Sheriff Bell, who quietly contemplates his lot in his professional life, and perhaps even struggles a bit, where his calm, no-pistol-needed mentality belies the growing violence of the border drug trade, the Texas where there are "kids with green hair and bones in their noses walking the streets," are the Coen Brothers too questioning where they fit at the midpoints of their own lives and careers?
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