Ryan McNeil
I’m not sure what I expected coming into NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. It’s directed by The Coen Brothers, but they’ve been on a bum streak lately (neither INTOLLERABLE CRUELTY nor THE LADYKILLERS did much for me). It’s based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, but I thought the adaptation of ALL THE PRETTY HORSES was a mess. But I’d heard good things, so I was hopeful…and yet still guarded.
Not to worry, as NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (* * * *) made for a great and gruesome start to my Day Five. The film is essentially a manhunt. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) happens upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, and decides to help himself to a satchel with two million dollars inside. Unfortunately for Moss, a sociopath named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) has been sent to collect it, and soon picks up his trail. Chigurh is ruthless, methodical, and amazingly efficient at what he does…oh yeah, and he’s as evil as it gets. The line that sums him up best asks:
“Just how dangerous is he?”
“Compared to what? The bubonic plague?”
Strangely, while the movie is in no way a comedy, it has a lot of witty lines like that, which had the very big 9am crowd in a good mood. It’s probably a good thing, because the movie is rather unsettling in its violence, and many scenes will have you squirming in your seat waiting for the inevitable gunshot. The only things worse than that, are the shots and bangs that you don’t even see coming.
I haven’t made any mention of Oscar nominations in this space, mostly because I think it’s too soon to get caught up in that sort of thing – but I’ll break my embargo just this once. Two performances that stand out, and may well carry over into Academy Award nominations come next year. Bardem, as the so evil he’s eee–villll Chigurh, and Tommy Lee Jones as the humble local sheriff, who’d really rather not get involved.
The movie opens everywhere in November.