No Country For Old Men

You know, my first thought while watching “No country for old men” is that this is what I wanted “a history of violence” to be like. Not that I disliked that movie but I feel that the Coen brothers have done a better job at telling the story of a mild mannered person capable of great violence. In this case I’m referring to Llewelyn Moss played by Josh Brolin. He’s a cowboy, a hunter and a Vietnam vet who happens across a very large sum of money left behind during a drug deal gone wrong. After making the seemingly senseless choice of returning to the scene of the crime he finds himself chased by both sides of the botched drug deal. While the plot might sound like one of those fugitive movies that Harrison Ford and Denzel Washington put out regularly I can guarantee that its execution is quite different.

One way in which the film sets itself apart is with its deliberate slow pace. Characters spend lots of screen time planning and plotting in silence, but watching them is somehow never boring. Particularly entertaining is the strange and terrible methods that this movies villain uses to kill people. Played menacingly by Javier Bardem, Anton Chigurh is a hit man wielding a compressed air gun from a slaughter house. Hired to recover the stolen drug money, he stalks Llewelyn killing everyone who gets in his path. This draws the attention of a reluctant old Sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones, who I guess is in charge of supplying the voice of reason in this world of senseless violence.

As the characters visit the many highways and motels of Texas you can’t help but notice the beautiful scenery and the charismatic locals played by top notch talent. Great performances zip by like cities in the night, luminous but muted enough to not distract the viewer from what is going on. Particularly memorable though is Kelly Macdonald as Llewellyn’s wife and Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells, they bring a little humanity to this dark world of badasses.

What will surprise most viewers is how much unlike the other Coen Brothers movies this one is. Ok, I guess super-villain Anton Chigurh is a nihilist but he lacks the faux German accent and ridiculous wardrobe of the Big Lebowski’s nihilists. More Cronenberg than Coen brothers, I think this may be the best crime drama I’ve seen in a long time.