Movie Review: No Country for Old Men

The comedian Steven Wright, best known for his lack of enthusiasm, once said, "You know how it feels when you're leaning back on a chair, and you lean too far back, and you almost fall over backwards, but then you catch yourself at the last second? I feel like that all the time..." That’s how I felt for about 2 hours watching “No Country for Old Men.”

The villain in this movie is so mysterious and disturbing, so unpredictable except in his creepy, emotionless, homicidal determination, that this movie keeps you off balance and unsettled from the opening scene to the last. No matter what is happening on screen, there is a sense that at any moment, you may see something you wish you hadn’t, and that's just the villain’s haircut.

“No Country for Old Men” is the latest movie from Joel and Ethan Cohen who are without a doubt my favorite film makers. Their credits include Raising Arizona (one of the top 3 funniest movies of all time. I will not argue about this), O Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Miller’s Crossing, Hudsucker Proxy and others. Their movies are consistently filled with odd, engrossing characters, strange camera angles, first-person point of view action sequences, fantastic dialogue and at least 5 scenes that make you think “now there’s something I never thought I would see.”

While most movies have the depth and substance of the film on your hands left behind by an hour of munching movie popcorn, the Cohen movies are deep and complex and layered like ogres. The story is always just a part of what there is to see. No shot is wasted, no word spoken fails to reveal something about a character or a situation. Their movies are strange and quirky and so, I do not expect everyone I meet to enjoy them. But they are masters of their craft.

I know that many people don’t like to look beyond the story when reading a book or watching a movie. Many people don’t even want to believe or acknowledge that there is more going on. That there is purposeful foreshadowing and symbolism and themes and messages beyond the dialogue and simple action of the characters is repugnant to many people who believe either that (a) all that stuff is made up by English teachers to make themselves feel intellectually superior or (b) that thinking about that kind of stuff ruins an otherwise good story. But if you are inclined to appreciate that sort of thing, the Cohens offer the opportunity to really enjoy it in their movies.

You know….if you’re into that sort of thing…

Anyway, No Country for Old Men is based on a book by the same title written by Cormac McCarthy. The title is from a poem by William Butler Yeats called “Sailing to Byzantium.” Thanks to my buddy Sean for that nugget. You can read the poem at http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/781. Reading the poem will tell you absolutely nothing about the movie, but reading it after you see the movie does provide some food for thought….if you’re into that sort of thing.

The movie stars Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem’s fantastic haircut. Brolin’s character finds some money that doesn’t belong to him. Other people want that money, including Bardem’s character. Those people are not nice at all and go about killing everything they can as they pursue the money. Jones plays a Sherriff trying to make sense of it all something like Marge Gunderson in Fargo. It is a simple plot, but not a simple movie. For one thing, Bardem’s character is really, really spooky. He calmly carries around this air canister that operates some kind of bolt gun used for killing cattle. Bardem uses it for everything from breaking into hotel rooms to executing people who have the misfortune of getting in his path. It becomes one of the great devices in the movie, because there is something so unorthodox about it, just the site of it makes you nervous and uncomfortable.

Brolin runs with the money and Bardem pursues him like the Terminator on valium. But while that’s the story, that’s not what the movie is about. The movie is about, at least in part, the struggle of learning that age brings experience and certain wisdom, but no ultimate insight into the real state of the world and of man and certainly of evil. There are certain aspects of the human condition that defy understanding or conventional description. Sometimes, things don’t fit in any of the boxes we have created to categorize and understand our world. When you’ve lived a long time and seen a lot, and have many boxes to put things, and then you discover yet more that doesn’t fit anywhere, it can be overwhelming and unnerving, especially when the discovery is something terrible.

No Country was filled with signature Cohen dialogue and camera work and character development. It carefully avoided cliché and anything that would break it’s bleak, desperate mood. It captures you from the beginning and carries you along with a knot in your stomach cultivating a morbid curiosity and a palpable sense of dread. It takes a special kind of movie to pull that off. Maybe that doesn’t sound pleasant, and it wasn’t always, but if you enjoy movies for more than a sight gag, a fun story and a twist ending, then you may enjoy this one.
It was an excellent movie. Brilliantly acted, written and directed. It was one of the few movies I’ve seen this year where I felt like I got my money’s worth.

Here is some more information to help you decide if you want to see it.

--While this review may make it sound like a weird foreign movie, the movie’s plot is actually fairly simple, and straight forward. Even if you don’t want to dissect it, it is a pretty good cat and mouse story that could be enjoyed at a surface level.

--If it has any appeal, it is worth seeing on the big screen where you can really enjoy the camera work.

--There is some violence and disturbing images in this movie. To be honest, the dread of violence and disturbing images is actually worse than what is shown, but there are still some pretty graphic violence. If that’s not for you, stay away. If it helps, it is about on par with Fargo for violence, though there is nothing to rival the chipper/shredder scene.

--I don’t believe there is any nudity or sex in the movie.

--There is action in the movie, but some of the previews make it seem like an action movie. It is not slow by any means, but it’s not a true shoot ‘em up action flick.

--While I’ve talked to people who enjoyed the book, you don’t have to have read it to enjoy the movie.

--This is not a warm and fuzzy movie at all. I bring this up because lots of people, especially those of my parents’ generation (though not my parents actually), go to see anything that Tommy Lee Jones is in because he so often plays such a good, old-fashioned, moral character. Jones does play this kind of character, but this is a creepy, violent movie and I’m trying to help out anyone who would say “I just loved that Tommy Lee Jones in ‘The Fugitive’, he seems like such a nice man, I’m going to go see this movie where he plays a small town sheriff.” I’m telling you, unless you’ve seen movies like Fargo or A Simple Plan or A History of Violence and enjoyed them, take a pass on this movie.

--Speaking of A Simple Plan, that’s a good, good movie with roughly the same plot and a really profound message. If you missed that one and don’t mind some tension and violence, that’s worth going back and renting.

This was the “guys night at the movies” movie this week. Not sure what we might see next week. Maybe “Hitman,” though I have to say it looks like it has the potential to be really, really bad.