No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men opens with a monologue ripped directly from the pages of the 2005 Cormac McCarthy novel, where Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) describes his encounter with a man from years ago, who was sent to the electric chair for killing a 14-year-old girl. Bell recalls visiting the man in prison shortly before the execution, but the man shows no regret for what he has done; in fact, he would do it again if he had it to do over. This kind of evil is so far beyond the Sheriff’s comprehension; as a man who in his earlier years on the job never needed to carry a gun, the country is changing, and he can’t make sense of it all.

Here, the name of this unstoppable, incomprehensible evil is Anton Chigurh (no one really knows how to pronounce his last name; McCarthy doesn’t give us a guide with his books), and he is the first person we meet. He is a lanky Hispanic fellow with an unruly mop of hair, and beady eyes that fill you with dread. He is played by Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who deserves every award for this role, because he completely commands the screen. And just as we cannot understand Chigurh, his weapons are equally strange: a tank of compressed air and a stungun–as one might use to slaughter cattle–which shoots a bolt right between his victim’s eyes, and then sucks it back into the gun, leaving a mark in the forehead, but with no evidence of ammunition.

The second is Llewelyn Moss (a wonderful Josh Brolin), a local welder and Vietnam vet, who is out hunting when he stumbles across a drug deal gone bad. He finds one badly wounded man begging for water, but he has none with him (it does beg to question why a seasoned hunter would not carry water with him). Moss discovers a briefcase containing $2.4 million, and goes home to his wife, Carla Jean (the excellent Kelly MacDonald). Later that night, though, he returns to the crime scene with water for the man–only to wind up in a confrontation with three men who are looking for the money. After narrowly escaping them, he runs home and bids his wife farewell, warning her to be careful. Then Moss flees town, pursued relentlessly by Chigurh, and the trail becomes littered with bloodied corpses.

Joel and Ethan Coen, who wrote and directed Fargo, create another masterpiece that is similarly violent, but feels tonally different. Unlike that film, there is no room for humorous asides at the audience here. Instead, the dark humor is more sparse and again pulled from the source material. While examining a massacre, Bell’s partner asks, “Well, this is a mess, ain’t it, Sheriff?”, to which the old man replies, “It’ll do till a mess comes around.”

Despite the strong performances from Brolin and Jones, the film really belongs to Bardem. The musical score by Carter Burtwell is magnificent, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography is, as always, masterful. The action sequences and suspense found here–particularly a brilliantly shot scene–are Hitchcockian in nature. The Coen Brothers themselves have described this as “the closest we will ever come to an action movie”.

Some critics and audiences simply don’t understand this film, seeing it as a pointlessly grim exercise in nihilism, instead of a relevant commentary on our times. But it is especially successful at being a fascinating character study, with Chigurh at the center. He is described as a “peculiar” man with “principles that transcend money or drugs”, and we learn that he will kill you just for inconveniencing him. Yet there is a scene early on, in a gas stop, where he uses a coin toss to decide the owner’s fate. What makes this scene so fascinating is that we feel the same sense of dread that the owner has etched into his face, as Chigurh demands the man to “call it”. Then he flips the coin, and so here we are shown his “principles”, although we know that ultimately, he is culpable for the outcome.

No Country for Old Men succeeds at not only being a surprisingly faithful adaptation of McCarthy’s novel but manages to improve on it in areas. Some of their choices, such as the omission of a single climactic scene, has angered viewers, but changes like this don’t rankle me. It’s one of the Coen Brothers’ best films and should receive some serious award recognition. It’s well-shot and well-edited, with a fantastic score, but the performances are what really bring this gritty tale to life. Hopefully, Bardem will be recognized as one of the greatest actors of our time, because without Chigurh, we would not understand the key theme at play. Forget old men, this is no country for good men.

Rated R for strong graphic violence and some language.

2 hours, 2 minutes