No Country for Old Men

****
11/17/07
by Scott Cupper

Sheriff Tom Bell…………...Tommy Lee Jones
Llewellyn Moss…………….Josh Brolin
Anton Chigurh……………...Javier Bardem
Carla Jean Moss……………Kelly MacDonald
Carson Well………………..Woody Harrelson
Wendell..…………………...Garret Dillahunt

Written & Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy

Rated R
Runtime: 2 hrs. 2 min.


Here is a movie that makes you lean forward and listen. As the opening credits rolled in silence, my ears were drawn to the sound of people digging in their popcorn bags. The movie does not come and get you, it draws you in. This makes the chase aspect of the movie more effective. So much of the suspense hinges on what is heard and not seen. You become attuned to listening to beeps and phones ringing and things scraping against one another and boots treading the floor. When I walked out of the theater, I heard the sound of my feet hitting the sidewalk.

The importance of sound is established in an early sequence that introduces Llewellyn Moss. Josh Brolin’s portrayal of Llewellyn is that of a simple man for whom bad impulses are still too familiar and good ones too new. We follow him across the Texas countryside as he tracks a deer he has shot. Blood on the ground leads him in a new direction. When he arrives at the carnage of a shootout where he finds heroin, he correctly guesses that there must be money. He finds it in a bag by the dead man who ran away with it. Llewellyn takes it. There is no dialogue except when Llewellyn meets a man who asks for agua. The only other words spoken are whatever Llewellyn deems worthy of uttering to himself. The crunch of his boots on the rocky ground, the straps on his binoculars and gun, the wind howling, these are his only accompaniment. We become as aware of what Llewellyn sees and hears as he is.

The man sent to retrieve the money, Anton Chigurh, has already been introduced and killed two people. One with an air tank that has a hose attached, a device we learn later is used to kill cattle. It’s also very useful for blowing locks off doors. Javier Bardem plays Anton. He is a terrifying figure, a man for whom killing is simply an act, perhaps even a sexual one. With his goofy smile, strange haircut, dark polyester clothing and voice that sounds like it got swallowed on the way up, we might think Chigurh stands outside the movie, an embodiment of death, if the havoc he wreaks wasn’t so devastating.

The cat and mouse chase between these two is so good because they are evenly matched. Both are men driven by their own codes of honor, Llewellyn’s more recognizable, involving a love for his wife Carla Jean he finds easier to express in action than kind words. They are also matched in intelligence. Initially, it seems far-fetched that Llewellyn is able to survive when facing Chigurh’s almost supernatural abilities until we learn Llewellyn is a Vietnam vet. Each man plots his next move, adapting and improvising as their plans fail or succeed.

Caught in the middle is Sheriff Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). What seems like a typical Tommy Lee Jones role of a man driven by obsession quietly isn’t. The movie begins with his voice over shots of Texas landscapes, telling a story about a teenage murderer he caught who said he’d been looking for someone to kill. Bell wonders what the old-timers would have done with the world he lives in nowadays. The question he’s really asking is, “What am I supposed to do?”

He seems more interested in answering this question than solving the crime. He avoids DEA agents who keep calling and asking him to come down to check out the sight of the shootout. His deputy is more likely to find him at the diner than at the office. He makes some attempts at investigating, but it’s never quite enough. He can’t figure out what weapon Chigurh is using, but when he mentions it in a story he tells Carla Jean and doesn’t make the connection, we realize he’s out of his depth. Or isn’t interested in getting in too deep.

No Country for Old Men has suffered the same criticism leveled at Michael Clayton. It’s effective but is there anything more? Yes. No character in the movie meets an end that we expect. The movie is interested in questions of fate and destiny. Perhaps this is why Chigurh is so different: he sees himself as fate. In one of the best scenes of the movie, he flips a coin and asks a gas station attendant to call it. Everyone involved understands that the man is calling his life. But even Chigurh, who seems to feel beyond the reach of fate, has this game cleverly turned on him by Carla Jean.

It’s happened that I’ve seen a couple of movies recently that have successfully addressed problems another movie was guilty of. Lars and the Real Girl answered problems that The Darjeeling Limited had. Now No Country for Old Men answers the problems found in American Gangster. The Coen brothers trust the story they are telling and don’t feel the need to move things along at a pace that isn’t necessary. The slowness of some scenes is agonizing, but that agony is part of the scene. The Coen brothers are master filmmakers. Their recent movies have been entertaining if not successful at every point. They never lose their footing here.