2007 / 122 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

A windswept desert. A pool of blood spreading toward a man’s shoes. A shadow beneath a door frame. A relentless dog swimming through a raging river. These are just some of the many haunting images indelibly burned into my brain after my first viewing of “No Country for Old Men”. But I could have listed dozens more (like the sight of a man walking through a pharmacy while a car explodes in the background).

“No Country for Old Men” begins with one man strangling a cop to escape police custody and then cuts over to the sight of another man hunting deer in the desert. This establishes both of these men as hunters, which is an excellent way of beginning a tale about a hunter and his quarry. The fact that the man seen hunting is largely the quarry in the tale that follows is what we like to call “irony”. Like “A Simple Plan”, “No Country for Old Men” is a cautionary tale about the dangers of picking up abandoned suitcases full of money. “A Simple Plan” was a somber, depressing look at the infighting and paranoia that can result from such an act. The danger in “No Country” is far more disturbing: that the briefcase might be tracked by a psychotic killer who would make Hannibal Lecter sleep with the lights on.

Javier Bardem portrays Anton Chigurh, the man who would make Hannibal Lecter piss himself. All you need to know about his character you can tell by looking at his ridiculous, Beatles-esque mop top. If this man cares that little about his own hair, how much do you think he’s going to care about other human beings? Bardem’s weapons of choice are a pressurized bolt gun (most commonly used for killing cattle) and a big gun with a ridiculously large silencer that nearly defies description. I’ve seen efficient, uncaring hit men in films before, but I’ve never seen a man as utterly ruthless, soulless, and completely efficient as Bardem in this movie. If he likes you he will flip a coin to decide whether you live or die. If he doesn’t, you simply die. He’s the most effective killer in any movie ever. Though, as good as he is, I doubt I would hire him even if I were the sort of guy who needed to hire hit men. The reason for that is simple: he is the most chilling sociopath I have ever seen, as likely to kill the people that hired him as he is the person he’s been hired to dispatch. Bardem is a shot of pure evil in this movie, with no chaser. He has a few great lines of dialogue and some wonderful scenes of character development, but he’s at his best when completely silent (as when he takes off his shoes and stalks someone in his socks so that they won’t hear him coming). If Bardem doesn’t get a best supporting actor nod, there’s no justice in the world. Hell, he might have enough screen time to qualify for Best Actor.

It takes a lot not to be blown off the screen by Bardem and before seeing this movie I would not have suspected that Josh Brolin was the kind of actor that could pull it off. But he’s amazing here, nothing short of a revelation, as the poor schmuck being hunted by Bardem’s sinister bastard. His character, Llewelyn Moss, lives in a trailer and drives a pick-up truck. The guy is eventually revealed to be a welder, for God’s sake, and yet he proves surprisingly resilient taking on various Mexican criminals and Bardem’s sociopathic slime ball. Not only that, but he manages to get under your skin and win your empathy with barely any demonstration of goodness. He’s not exactly a good guy, and he’s not a bad guy, he’s just a guy…and yet somehow you’re rooting for him all the way. Brolin conveys a lot of character traits and interesting nuances with a minimum of dialogue. It’s all in his eyes, his posture, and his laconic mannerisms. By the time his wife (Kelly MacDonald, who is also astonishingly good) chats him up near the end of the movie, her description of him is hardly necessary. We already know what kind of guy he is. We already know that he’s a man who doesn’t back down, no matter how monumental the odds against him are.

For the majority of its running length, “No Country for Old Men” is a riveting cat and mouse thriller, one of the finest ever made. In fact, it’s far more than that. It’s a philosophical, austere portrait of a two men in a desperate situation. It takes its time, but it is never anything less than captivating, even when it pauses for the philosophical musings of Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff casually following the trail of corpses in Bardem’s wake. Jones is great here, but he’s not really anything exceptional. Tommy Lee Jones is almost always great, and his work here is no exception. There’s a wonderful scene near the end between him and Barry Corbin (the retired astronaut from “Northern Exposure”) that has nothing to do with the main action and is yet still worth the price of admission. He, too, deserves some recognition. Tommy Lee doing his usual dependable job is better than most other actors I’ve seen this year.

But you may have mentioned that I said “for the majority of its running length”. That’s because, in its final twenty minutes, “No Country for Old Men” turns into perhaps the most anticlimactic film ever made. The movie is barreling relentlessly toward an ending that simply never comes. I felt robbed by the end of “No Country for Old Men” and it was here that the movie loses a full fist of rating for me. It’s a spellbinding, meticulously crafted, finely acted, TRIUMPH of a movie that just sort of meanders off into nowhere during its final act. I’m sure many people will claim that I just “didn’t get it” and that’s fine. I probably didn’t. But I can’t see the point to the movie’s final act, and I’ve really, really thought about it. If the point of the ending was to be different, well, mission accomplished. But the movie doesn’t pay off for me. Not emotionally, philosophically, or storywise. The movie is so incredibly strong otherwise that I can’t quite believe how pointless the ending was. Until then, it was easily the best movie of the year.

I understand what happened during those final twenty minutes, sure I do. I just don’t understand why the filmmakers took that route instead of providing any kind of payoff. I’m not asking for closure. I’m just asking for a point. The ending might be realistic, but it doesn’t pay off thematically or emotionally for me, and that’s what a story (ANY story) is supposed to do. But, still, “No Country for Old Men” is two-thirds of a masterpiece. And two thirds of a masterpiece is still better than none.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.