“No Country For Old Men”
2007 – Joel & Ethan Coen
Rated R
Vault Rating: 8.5
The ending of “No Country for Old Men” leaves one flat. Some in these corners have called it a sort of “Sopranos” ending.
This gripping best-picture winner cuts, for some, against the grain of the modern western because it doesn’t have a clean cut resolution. There is no ultimate gun battle. The protagonist and antagonist don’t meet at high noon.
Directors Joel and Ethan Coen have skirted the issue of the showdown, God bless them.
I call this a modern western, something Tommy Lee Jones is getting very good at of late given his splendid turn in the fabulous “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”, because it takes place in the west and it has much to do with a code of ethics. Jones portrays an old school sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, who is following a trail of drug related violence, no – mayhem – that he cannot fathom.
Tommy Lee Jones portrays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a careworn lawman who struggles to understand the trail of mayhem he follows in today’s feature, which won four Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
“The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure,” drawls Bell over opening scenes of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem as one of the most perfect bad actors of film history) in action.
“It’s not that I was afraid of it,” continues Bell. “I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, ‘Okay. I’ll be a part of this world.”
Chigurh walks the landscape of wicked men like some larger, mythical engine of destruction. He, like some of author Cormac McCarthy’s characters, has no antecedents. No precedent. He is the negative image of Sheriff Bell, who is steeped in lineage and tradition.
Javier Bardem portrays Anton Chigurh, among the greatest cinema villains in history, in today’s feature, “No Country for Old Men.” Bardem rightly won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
“No Country for Old Men” is not about Chigurh, who is chasing $2 million in drug money. Rather, the story is about Sheriff Bell, a rather minor character in the story who is merely an honest witness. If you really want to get this movie completely, listen to the dialogue between the various police officers.
Josh Brolin portrays Llewelyn Moss, a hunter who stumbles onto a case with $2 million inside. A lucky day? Maybe.
“What’cha got aint nothing new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s comin’, it aint all waiting on you. That’s vanity,” says one retired law man from his wheelchair.
“It’s beyond the pale,” says another. “It’s beyond anything.”
The quiet dialogue at films end is pretty much a continuation of the speech at the outset and gives the viewer a frame of reference. The litter of corpses in Chigurh’s wake keeps the story moving at an edge of the seat pace. Gripping stuff. Close inspection, though, and casual consideration of the title, lets us know this is a story about a dignified man – one who is still carrying the fire – who is watching the world turn on itself.
Shocking and sad.
“Things are just different these days. It isn’t the same anymore.”
We’ve all heard such laments and these are the points McCarthy examines. The Coen brothers haven’t supplied exactly what “it” is that’s changed. Somewhere, though, in the parlay between spectacle and witness is that damaged place where society’s fuse has blown.
“No Country for Old Men” is an important film.