Cast: Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly McDonald

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Running time: 2 hrs 2 mins

Genre: Western/Thriller/Drama/Adaptation


REVIEW:


Heaven be thy judge: why such a ruthless, violent film feels like a blessing from high above? Why a breathtakingly tense thriller feels like a gust of fresh air? Ironic, it is. But whether you agree with the critics and sing ‘hossanah in the highest’ that this film is the year’s best, or be one of the non-conformists of artsy cinema who compels to argue that TRANSFORMERS is indeed the year’s finest, then pack it all up and start revising your movie bible, maybe you’ll find some enlightenment. Argue this to the Coen brothers, and they’d probably send Chigurh and his oxygen-tank to your doorstep.


We know a film is truly something by the looks and feel of it in its first few scenes, and true enough, here in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, in the first five minutes we see gorgeously parched Western cinematography. Not the first five minutes in, we already see an act so violent that it plays on your fears and nightmares. Evil is embodied in its purest form in the character of Anton Chigurh (the heart-poundingly brilliant and creepy performance by Javier Bardem), the fix-it guy cum assassin hired to retrieve a stash of cash from a drug deal in an isolated desert spot. Aside from his freakish haircut, and looks that could kill, he brings with him a slaughterhouse compressed-air tank, his weapon of choice, to mercilessly kill anyone that stands against him and the money in one silent shot of compacted air – dead body on the floor. He definitely looks like Satan in a black jacket and leather boots, roaming around the locale, tossing coin to anyone he meets, whose lives lie in the fate of the coin. There has probably been no other character in movie history that evokes the purity of evil since the frightening Hannibal Lecter by Anthony Hopkins. Now with added aplomb. Cheers Bardem for causing us movie nightmares – that terrifying grin, sends shivers.


The doomed core of the story is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin in an act so meek and substantial), who discovers a pile of money in a drug-deal gone-wrong scene, eerie atmosphere of dead bodies scattered along the scabrous sands. Of course, like any human would do, he grabs the money and runs. He realises too late that he can’t hide. It’s this moralistic cautionary tale that centres on Moss that humans are doomed to face choices, like Chigurh’s random-toss-of-a-coin principle, anybody’s fate depends on it. And so suffers his almost-naive wife played by Scot actress Kelly McDonald, perfecting a Texan drawl.


Then there’s the good copper Ed Tom Bell (hauntingly portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones), whose tired, saggy lines on his face reflects the battles and weariness he’d gone through in his life, straightening the crooked ways of the country. In the final scene, where it really penny-drops upon us why this is called NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, as some might go cerebral of the ending and start going “what-the--?”, Ed’s heavily carved face contemplates on his retirement and the upshot of the recent crime event, he questions the ethos of the slowly-ruining country that is America, the questions of morals that thy fathers handed down being degraded into something that all about violence, quick-fix, and irreverence.


The Coen brothers have got to be thanked for this. A film like this could catapult cinema-making principles at its staunchest. This could have easily wandered off being an action film, but the Coen brothers made sure that they steered each and every shot into the unhurried yet lurid, calm yet shocking territories of a breathless, taut thriller. It’s a cat-and-mouse plot, yet a plot that’s handled so expertly, frame-by-frame calculated into a perfect timing of suffocating atmosphere. One amazingly handled scene was Llewelyn Moss’s discovery of the drug-deal scene. The directors opted not to blend in musical score but rather settle on a eerily quiet, meditative atmosphere that only amplifies every minute of sound created: the walking footsteps on wooden floor, the sound of boots treading gravel, the noise of flies zooming around, the whisper of the wind, and so on. And the staggeringly complex chase through Western landscapes, dreary motels, and bleak empty streets at night, it is no-holds-bar suspense. You’ve got to love the Coens, they could teach filmmaker-slash-dunderheads how to make an effective thriller, with added pathos.


VERDICT:


A breath-hitching, relentless thriller, a burning drama, a modern contemplation on America – and most of all, a prototype of sheer immaculate filmmaking, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is clearly one of the year’s very best. Believe the critical hype.



RATING: A