No Country For Old Men
No Country For Old Men is this year’s big Academy Award winner, scooping Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (for Javier Bardem), Best Director (for the Coen brothers) and the biggie, Best Film.
Still, you never can tell with the Academy, and the assorted critics associations. Although admittedly not often, they can throw their support behind some highly flawed films – leaving ordinary movie goers disappointed when they’re lured into cinemas by the praise. Scorsese’s over-rated, dull The Aviator springs to mind.
No Country For Old Men, fortunately, is a very good film. However, I certainly wouldn’t classify it as the best film of the year, as many awards groups would let you believe.
The film offers an unusually quiet, contemplative, and, dare I say, consciously arty approach to the Thriller genre. The film’s plot centres on a reticent Vietnam veteran, Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who stumbles across a botched drug deal in rural Texas and decides to take the $2 million he finds abandoned on the scene. Well aware of the danger his actions pose to his wife, Moss goes on the run. Desperate to get their money back, Mexican drug dealers and, more dangerously, psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) are on Moss’s trail.
No Country For Old Men is a film filled with long, pensive silences. The film is as much a Western as it is a Thriller. Characters stand around in jeans and cowboy hats, kicking at the dry dirt under their feet. Characters' plans methodically unfold, one step at a time, all of which the audience sees. Still, this slow pacing and quietness mean that when the action starts up, it hits you as hard as a punch to the nose. The silent patches add perfect emphasis to the graphic, realistic violence.
The real highlight of No Country For Old Men is an extended cat-and-mouse chase sequence, pitting Moss against Chigurh in the quiet night time streets of a border town. What really makes these scenes so tense and exciting is their realism. Chigurh may be described by Woody Harrelson’s character as more dangerous than “the Bubonic plague”, but he’s still just a human; not your standard indestructible Horror movie boogeyman. He bleeds. He feels pain. Both he and Moss are equally at the mercy of chance. And both actors, Bardem and Brolin, provide a fascinating duo of performances that carry the film.
Actually, there are a number of excellent performances in the film. Tommy Lee Jones is especially good as a sheriff disheartened by the changes he sees in late 1970's society (when the film is set). Gone are the days where lawmen didn’t need to carry guns. Now the police are dealing increasingly with inexplicably evil people who torture, demean and kill for the fun of it. Jones’s sheriff is on the cusp of quitting his thankless job.
For the first hour and a half, No Country For Old Men is excellent. Then, without spoiling the film, an important character dies. One minute they’re there and the next they’re a pair of bloody legs in the corner of the screen. You don’t even see the character die. From that moment, the energy is sucked from the film and it just seems to trundle along to its conclusion. In reality the credits start rolling probably 15 minutes after the death, although it feels like half an hour once you stop caring about events onscreen.
Normally I have no problem with ambiguous endings and unanswered questions, but No Country For Old Men leaves multiple massive question marks. Sure, the ending made me think far more than most of today's films do, but it still unfortunately tempered my enjoyment. A lot. No Country For Old Men is a very good film but I just can't bring myself to call it Truly Great.
Still, you never can tell with the Academy, and the assorted critics associations. Although admittedly not often, they can throw their support behind some highly flawed films – leaving ordinary movie goers disappointed when they’re lured into cinemas by the praise. Scorsese’s over-rated, dull The Aviator springs to mind.
No Country For Old Men, fortunately, is a very good film. However, I certainly wouldn’t classify it as the best film of the year, as many awards groups would let you believe.
The film offers an unusually quiet, contemplative, and, dare I say, consciously arty approach to the Thriller genre. The film’s plot centres on a reticent Vietnam veteran, Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who stumbles across a botched drug deal in rural Texas and decides to take the $2 million he finds abandoned on the scene. Well aware of the danger his actions pose to his wife, Moss goes on the run. Desperate to get their money back, Mexican drug dealers and, more dangerously, psychopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) are on Moss’s trail.
No Country For Old Men is a film filled with long, pensive silences. The film is as much a Western as it is a Thriller. Characters stand around in jeans and cowboy hats, kicking at the dry dirt under their feet. Characters' plans methodically unfold, one step at a time, all of which the audience sees. Still, this slow pacing and quietness mean that when the action starts up, it hits you as hard as a punch to the nose. The silent patches add perfect emphasis to the graphic, realistic violence.
The real highlight of No Country For Old Men is an extended cat-and-mouse chase sequence, pitting Moss against Chigurh in the quiet night time streets of a border town. What really makes these scenes so tense and exciting is their realism. Chigurh may be described by Woody Harrelson’s character as more dangerous than “the Bubonic plague”, but he’s still just a human; not your standard indestructible Horror movie boogeyman. He bleeds. He feels pain. Both he and Moss are equally at the mercy of chance. And both actors, Bardem and Brolin, provide a fascinating duo of performances that carry the film.
Actually, there are a number of excellent performances in the film. Tommy Lee Jones is especially good as a sheriff disheartened by the changes he sees in late 1970's society (when the film is set). Gone are the days where lawmen didn’t need to carry guns. Now the police are dealing increasingly with inexplicably evil people who torture, demean and kill for the fun of it. Jones’s sheriff is on the cusp of quitting his thankless job.
For the first hour and a half, No Country For Old Men is excellent. Then, without spoiling the film, an important character dies. One minute they’re there and the next they’re a pair of bloody legs in the corner of the screen. You don’t even see the character die. From that moment, the energy is sucked from the film and it just seems to trundle along to its conclusion. In reality the credits start rolling probably 15 minutes after the death, although it feels like half an hour once you stop caring about events onscreen.
Normally I have no problem with ambiguous endings and unanswered questions, but No Country For Old Men leaves multiple massive question marks. Sure, the ending made me think far more than most of today's films do, but it still unfortunately tempered my enjoyment. A lot. No Country For Old Men is a very good film but I just can't bring myself to call it Truly Great.
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