No Country for Old Men
iView Author: The Narcissist (Goa, India)
Email: withheld
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No Country for Old Men – A Review
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Cast – Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson
Directed By – Coen Brothers
Most of the westerns I’ve watched have either had the action or the story or both holding centrestage. For example, it was pure raw action in movies like Django, The Magnificient Seven or the like whereas it was a strong storyline in movies like Hang ’em High, High Plains Drifter or The Outlaw Josie Wales. It was a combination of both in the sphagetti western trilogy of Sergio Leone. But save Clint Eastwood’s seminal Unforgiven, I haven’t seen any western that goes beyond the basic plot/story and/or the action. So, I was quite interested in seeing how the Coen brothers (usually famous for exploring themes of human weaknesses through hard hitting dramas) would handle a western. Plus, No Country had won numerous accolades and was a critical as well as commercial success. Naturally, expectation levels were high. And the talented Joel and Ethan Coen didn’t disappoint.
The movie is about a drug deal gone wrong and its aftermath. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a hunter comes across scattered corpses while hunting and on further investigation, finds a bag filled with $2 million. He decamps with it but in the process, gets the drug mafia on his trail due to a radio transponder hidden in the bag. The mafia’s pursuit of Moss is handled by a deranged killer called Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). The local Sherriff Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is just a step or two behind the hunter who is not the hunted and the killer who is now the hunter. The movie follows the two chases – Chigurh chasing Moss and Sherriff Bell chasing Moss and Chigurh and culminates in a summarising climax that primarily tries to reestablish what the directors were trying to portray through the story. Though the narrative might follow the chases tightly, the movie is not just about them alone. It’s a comment on human greed and how it completely takes over all actions and reactions of a person. Its a comment on the decaying times, seen through the eyes of the old timer Sherriff Bell. The way things unfold are so typically reminiscent of the Coen brothers’ earlier masterpiece – Fargo. The violence in Fargo, though, was far more unplanned and sponteneous. In No Country…, it’s Chigurh on a calculated rampage.
Performancewise, this movie has got the proverbial 3 aces up its sleeve. Tommy Lee Jones has almost perfected the lone ranger lawman act and its second nature to him. He’s superlative as Sherriff Bell. Though he’s not the best at display. That honour would go to the menacing Javier Bardem. He as Chigurh gives us a screen baddie we haven’t seen since Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. And then we have Josh Brolin’s Moss. Brolin is equally competent at the beginning of the movie as the procrastinating hunter as he is in the later part as the man on the run with the money when he is fully in charge of what he’s doing. Other actors like Woody Harrelson as the cocky bounty hunter Col. Carson Wells and Kelly MacDonald as Moss’ wife also put in solid performances.
It would be blasphemy to write about this movie without mentioning the contribution of the Coen brothers. They are the soul of the project as they perform the script adaptation, direction and editing with aplomb. Right from the opening sequence where Chigurh is first arrested and then escapes till the climax, not one scene looked unnecessary or boring. 10/10 to them for this. The Coens’ longtime collaborator Roger Deakins’ cinematography is up there among the best and the way he captures the texan and mexican desert in its various shades (tense, gloomy, agitated etc.) synchronising with the mood of the movie is amazing.
The only thing that makes it a movie not fit for everyone is the gut-wrenching violence, though that’s a common denominator among all Coen brothers’ movies. As a sidenote here, I recall that I first saw Fargo classified as a comedy on IMDB (I usually don’t go beyond the basic plot summary on IMDB before watching a movie as it spoils the movie for me). On seeing the movie, I realised that the only comedy in the movie was a few lines mouthed by Steve Buscemi. Fargo happened to be my first Coen brothers’ movie and then I soaked myself in their works like Blood Simple and The Big Lebowski. Anyways, back to the point – this is not one for the weak hearted. Not that it has a lot of blood flowing and all, but there’s something disturbing about the violence. Maybe its the underlying theme of the movie combined with the menace of Chigurh that makes it so.
Overall, this is a must-see for any film buff. I would recommend this with a rating of 4.5/5 – the half point deducted for certain pieces of the dialogue that were incomprehensible to me due to the accent. However, that didn’t spoil the movie for me at all.
Tags: Clint Eastwood, Coen Brothers, Django, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
IMO one of the strongest points of this film was the sparseness/ virtual absence of background music. That added significantly to the ‘mood’ of the film.
The cat mouse chase is amazing
The dialogue is absolutely vital to this film….filled with wry one liners ….the Coens are masters at dialogue…even there comparatively lesser efforts like Intolerable Cruelty crackles with witty dialogue….better watch this on a good subtitled DVD…
Talking of dialogue – the scene between Chigurh and the old man at the gas station is great.
Another brilliant scene from the point of view of execution is the car crash towards the end. When I first saw the film, it caught me completely unawares. Since then I have watched the film 5-6 times and even though I know exactly when it’s going to happen, it doesn’t fail to shake me up and has alsot the same effect as the first time I saw it. Amazing stuff!
I particularly liked the scene on the bridge when chigurh shoots the bird while driving. The numbness of the sequence suddenly gets a jolt with the echo of the gunshot and the reverberation in the bridge together with a superb camera work capturing the flying bird and car.Amazing.Brilliant direction and cinematography.
I agree with you there about Anton Chigurh being the best, most memorably terrifying villain since Hannibal Lecter.
Although Kevin Spacey from Seven comes mighty close, I must say. If only he’d had a slightly longer role…..
NCFOM is a powerful and well directed movie…
One of the most rivetting sequences in the movie is the confrontation between Bardem and Harreelson wher Harrelson gets bumped off…. The sequence is quite disturbing in the manner in which it has been shot…..
Overall,makes for an impressing watch…..Worth watching time and again…..
Thanks everyone for taking the time to go through this and commenting.
Aditya – Didn’t actually think from the point of view that you mention in the first comment. But now that you do mention it, yes…the sparingly used bg music definitely added to the mood of the movie.
Roodrow – That scene took a couple of seconds to register. My attention was fixed on the rails of the bridge when suddenly, the gun goes BAM…electric.
And talking of dialogue, the confrontation between Chigurh and Carla Jean Moss is also one of the wittiest in the movie.
I’ve been reviewing movies since quite some time. I usually post them on a discussion board that I post regularly on as well as on my blog. Wanted to reach out to a larger audience and get their views on the movies too. What better than this could I ask for?
Hope to be back with some more reviews and essays.
a rare case where the screenplay and film match up to the book’s intensity. chigurh as villain is so vicious he could spawn his own sequels.
I think technically it was one of the most amazing films i have seen in recent times. The visual imagery is mind boggling. But with all the brilliance of the craft aside there was something missing…i mean i am not able to put my finger to it…but after watching the movie i get a feeling of ‘man i got cheated a bit, this could have been a little better’. Well the themes of chance occurences or fate playing a role has been adapted by many a directors before, esp Tarantino in Pulp Fiction or say Kill Bill although it wasnt the only theme in the film. But somehow i felt either they could have gone all out and made it a little more bizarre or fantastical or chosen to keep it more real or less chancy if you may….I felt the story was somewhere in between and hence less effective….to their credit they remained faithful to the book but again they had the liberty to add some of their own to it….
@Trimoneo
They say that nothing is perfect. And there’s always a scope for improvement in everything. Having said that, this is a movie where one would find it really difficult to pinpoint a flaw. Your comment itself is a case in point.
And IMO, the theme pursued here is not as much about chance occurences or fate…thats just the starting point. Its more about the single-mindedness and sense of focus that greed brings into man. Beyond the point where Moss chances into the dough, there wasn’t any chance factor in view.
How about the underlying theme of a force so strong that our conventions of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ doesn’t stand up to its scrutiny. Chigurh is not a villain in the movie. Villains are supposed to have failings, motivations out of greed or any other animal instinct. He has none. He is the agent of fate itself which crosses paths of people around and no one remains untouched, everyone is shaped by it. He is just not a killer. he violates the personal space of the people. He looks inside their soul and their fear of death.
Bell is not so much shaken by the decay of society as he is by coming to terms with the fact that he has confronted and survived this force. Its a signal for him to hang his boots , this is something he knows he can’t face again. He is the only one who has some idea of what chigurh really is.
Its a perfect movie, at least for me as every time I think of it, I find something new.
The ending is something else..
Didn’t quite get the drif of your comment Sourav
No country is an endless topic.
@abhi, well said about Chigurh breaking the barriers of the goodness in a character, or the lack of it.
When I first watched the film, I didn’t go beyond the initial wow feeling at all the Coens regulars- camera, dialogues, sparseness and intrigue.
Second time, I tripped on few scenes over and over, and most of them were without any dialogues.
Third time, I started unraveling the threads of the story, cause and effect, good and evil, the balancing act of nature, and the irony of it all.
Fourth time, not happened yet.
No country and there will be blood have been some of the best ’study’ films to have come in recent years. Few others I can think of – the fall, be kind rewind, superbad, wall -e.
The film is no doubt amazing but I would say your review fails to bring out why the movie works.
This is not a criticism but I believe a great film needs a great analysis about why it works.
@P :
My dear friend, I tried my best in putting across my views on why the film works. The comments on the review added on to it. Everyone contributed in their own way.
And if it was “not a criticism”, I’d have expected you too to add on to the discussion constructively.
And I agree that my review wasn’t great. I’m still a novice at doing reviews and any constructive feedback on how I could better my earlier efforts would be greatly appreciated.