Movie Review: No Country for Old Men

Buckle up, sports fans, we got a different breed of cattle on our hands here. We're reviewing the movie "No Country For Old Men" tonight. It's the latest installment from the Coen brothers, and their first adaptation of a novel. The fact that I believe the Coen brothers are the best filmmakers shooting out there is irrelevant, really. Any crackpot on the street with a critic's column will tell you to go see this movie, and they are. I've seen the movie five times and read the book through once, and I can say with definite certainty we got a thick piece of work here.

I was interested in seeing their adaptation of a novel since their original writing is what makes them unique, and their voice is always so naturally derived from the atmospheres created by it. But the voices of both artists are virtually identical and it is easy to see why they picked Cormac McCarthy's novel to bring to the screen. While the omissions, and especially the additions, made from the book for the movie are obviously a great investigation into decision making in adaptations, it would be a waste of everybody's time to go trudging through the entirety of it, and I don't want to ruin anything for those of you who haven't done it yet anyway. If you want to know what the differences are, go to Barnes & Noble, it's right out on display, will be until the movie's out of theatres.

For those of us watching with the artist's eye, a word on direction. I had anticipated this film much like "Fargo" in many aspects. Especially more so than any of their other films. Lots of landscapes, almost still photography composition, using the long straight roads and natural diagonals of the land. Whether a sea of tan Texan desert grass, or a sea of Fargo snow, I liked this film for a vision of simple folk and simple country. However, true to the book, there is a darker, looming vibration. The storm's a-brewin'. This is indeed a film about contrast. Both thematically, and then represented visually by camera use and sound work.

The first time I saw the film I thought there was very little camera movement at all. Especially for the brothers Coen and their long-time shooter Roger Deakins B.S.C. I was even expecting a more reserved look, but you're always getting a lesson with the camera in their films --a clinic is what it is. It costs ten dollars. Or five for the bootleg down Canal St. (I didn't pay no fifty dollars in theatres, folks. And I didn't want it in the hands of some passerby). Anyway, the fact is they changed their style a bit. We're not rolling across the lanes of a Lebowski bowling alley, or tracking through the long highways in "Raising Arizona", but there is also more movement than there is in "Fargo." As always the movements of the camera are motivated to telling the story in the best possible way, but in this film it feels almost seamless. Now I always go into a movie with a keen eye for direction. Granted that's alongside a bottle of wine or a sixer of my choice, but I try not to miss much. I'll tell you what though, they slip it by you in this one.

Combinations of super slow camera movements, pans, and long takes of wide landscapes are constantly being contrasted in the action scenes by quick cutting and close ups that all weld together to form a relentless monument to filmmaking. They're using every shot to their advantage. "Firing on all cylinders" I believe is how the hacks put it. There is virtually no scored soundtrack, and moments of violence that would typically be marked with heavy scoring are eerily quiet, creating an uneasiness about the world we're in, and particularly the people we're with:

Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, the simple Texan hunter who comes across a satchel of money and spends the rest of the movie trying to run off with it while dodging bullets and other flying projectiles. He portrays the strong, rugged American cowboy but with a tinge of boyish glee about him maintained throughout the entire movie. The character in the book is actually funnier than in the film, and this interpretation by Brolin is completely validated in my mind. And who wouldn't be gleeful after tripping over two mil in the back country? So it's hard to say if it was a choice or not, but the levity is buried underneath there and it works for the character.

Mr. Javier Bardem manages to completely become the essence of fear as the hit man Anton Chigurh. In an interview he said he saw his character as a manifestation of violence. Any good actor has the ability to transcend becoming physical people and things, and to become the essence of an idea: ethereal entities. And here Javier manages to become a finite combination. We look at him and see the glossy eyes of a bored inconvenienced hunter. If his performance wasn't so stunningly terrifying, it would be hilarious. I found myself laughing through even my first viewing of his performance, but now I truly find it entertaining. You're just witnessing a man in a different world. Human life is a very different commodity in the world in which he reigns, and it's freeing and exciting to view it through his eyes. Eyes quoted to resemble "wet stones" in the book. A feat only Javier could have managed to pull off unflinchingly. Even scarier while limping, Anton Chigurh brings back fond memories of the Overlook Hotel and Jack Torrence gimping through the snow toting an axe and screaming for his Danny boy.

Tommy Lee Jones gives us the character Ed Tom Bell. Finally we come to poor old Ed Tom. Though introduced to us in the initial voice over, his face don't see the light of day 'til it's bowed loading a horse onto a trailer a good ways into the film. When we do see it, it looks as much a part of the landscape as the cracked ground they walk on. Whether slung back in the chair of the diner, or bending over the bloated bodies of bullet riddled Mexican Uzi heroin dealers, he is this country. Not shocked anymore. Just disappointed. Truly a father figure. As disappointed as Frances McDormand's character is in the closing scenes of "Fargo." He is an obvious catalyst of their theme throughout, and plays the part with distinction.

While every cop story touches on the idea of cop and criminal being the same person, it's different in this film. It's not Robert DeNiro sitting across the table from Al Pacino in Michael Mann's "Heat." It's a bit more subtly executed here. Javier has said, and I find as well, that they are really three versions of the same man. I don't want to give too much away, and I guess if we want to get smug about it we could call it the Common Man, Good, and Evil: a story about that Man and what that struggle forces him to do and become. But it's really not that simple and the depth of their respective performances proves it.

I came here expecting to see the mature patient storytelling representative of where I think the Coen brothers are in their career and what they're trying to do. It's obvious with the story they picked what kind of movie they wanted to make. I think a lot of people came here expecting more of an action film, and the points of quiet meditation and long introspection tend to break the pace for the common movie-goer. I think they weren't expecting the combination of the artistic composition mixed with the fast ruthless violence. That being said, I haven't met anybody who didn't say they liked it when they thought back on it. That's because the tone is not confused, it's separated, perhaps, but purposefully, and in a manner that leaves a very specific and coherent taste. And though the body count does rise, we are not left with a feeling of gratuitous death, and I do believe Sherrif Ed Tom would agree they all died of natural causes.

The Coen brothers said they consider this the closest they'd get to an action film. While initially confused about this remark- the camera movement is down, as is the soundtrack, two particularly effective tools in action films- I was able to come to understand the film as more of a thriller. A good old time Texas murder festival. The dark nights, long open plains, the smell of death in the air. The roaring of an engine and a sudden burst of spotlight overpowering the distant flash of an approaching lightning storm. Mixed with yelling in a different tongue and the barking of dogs. These are the makings of terror, and yes, perhaps intelligent action as well.

When it comes down to it, if I ever wake up in a basement tied to a chair I would much rather see Dr. Hannibal Lecter walk down the stairs than a one Mr. Anton Chigurh. Come awards time, depending on the spread and where the Hollywood Foreign Press' collective head is at, I'd let it ride on black...finally. Well sports fans, I'm off to buy myself a pair of alligator skin cowboy boots. 'Til next time...take her easy.

I award "No Country For Old Men" five shots of Jack Daniels.