I saw “No Country For Old Men” today. I’ve been meaning to see it for a while now and just haven’t gotten around to it. Got an early start on the day and towards the middle of it, we decided to go see a flick. I’m really glad I saw this movie on the big screen. It isn’t that I’m one of these film geeks that talks about camera angles and the way shots are setup. Honestly, if I spent a lot of time in consideration of how a movie was made, I’d likely enjoy them a lot less. The characters in this movie are for the most part standard fare, everyday folk in a strange situation. Where a lot of the dialogue fails expressions speak volumes. Think “Fargo”, another film done by the Coens.
The movie starts off with a narration by Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, in which he speaks of the horrible nature of a crime that’s been committed and how it’s a reflection of how the world has changed for the worse. This is the underlying moral of the film, an older man considering how the world has up and come apart. A drug deal goes bad in the desert. A bunch of Mexicans are catching flies in the middle of nowhere having gunned each other down.  Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) a “do nothing” is hunting antelope and manages to wound his prey but not outright kill it, so he sets off to track it. He comes across the scene of the deal gone badly, finds the drugs in one of the truck beds and smartly considers that somebody probably survived the shoot out and skipped off (on foot) with the buy money. Needless to say it doesn’t take long to find the money and the body of the one bandit that managed to get away but not far. Two million dollars in hand, Llewelyn heads back to his trailer.Â
Now I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that somebody is going to want this money back. If you’ve read a book or seen a movie that’s started this way, you already know what’s going to happen. Thankfully some originality is brought into the mix in the form of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who is hired to find the money. He’s a machine, nothing but a cold-blooded killer on a mission. I have to admit, Bardem manages to play one of the spookiest characters I’ve seen in a long time. Sure some of his dialogue is ridiculous. Sure his flipping of a coin is trite, but the man is intense. Additionally, he doesn’t use a standard type of weapon to kill; he uses a cattle gun, which ends up being a very nice touch.  I found myself thinking, I need to get me one of those.
The pursuit of the money and all of the side stories and murders in this film are actually the filler. At its heart this is a story about people. Tommy Lee Jones is excellent as the well-worn Sheriff Bell. His face is like a landscape and it helps that he seems to personify “experience”. He’s a man that’s seen enough. He decides to retire at the end of the film, but there is a great scene between the sheriff and his uncle. They discuss the death of another uncle back in 1909. Apparently Indians came and killed him at his door. The point being that the world really hasn’t changed all that much, horrible and violent acts have been committed throughout history, even their family’s history.
In the end when all is said and done, resolution really doesn’t come wrapped in a neat bow. We can only speculate about a good bit of what’s gone on. It isn’t laid out on a plate for you. Maybe that’s why I appreciated the movie so much… they didn’t chew it all up for you in order that it was easier to swallow.
I highly recommend this film but warn you in advance that there is a fair share of blood and violence.
