NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Reviewed by Sam Hatch

I really wanted to love No Country For Old Men. I'm not a Coen brothers acolyte per se, but I've enjoyed most of their films to date – even the heavily panned remake of The Ladykillers back in 2004. No Country marks a bit of a turn for the talented pair, though they've already plumbed some dark territory in films such as Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing. The difference here being that there's a minimum of forced quirkiness, and they are willing to cannonball right into the deep end of this unsettling subject matter without a comedic life preserver.

There's also a remarkable lack of music in the film. While longtime Coens fave Carter Burwell is listed in the credits as the official composer, there are only a few instances of a mood-enhancing drone throughout the film's two-hour-plus running time. Quentin Tarantino has already blazed the trail for score-less features, but he fills in most of the resulting gaps with 70s pop music. Here you're left listening to nothing but the wind and the troubling questions being asked of you by your own soul. This ultimately proves the lie that a film is incomplete without music. Sometimes that may hold some water, but while No Country is chock full of tension and gunfights (things commonly thought to require the aid of a string orchestra), the material works on its own.

The first exchange of bullets happens before the movie begins, as the mysterious, taciturn welder Llewelyn Moss (a sublime performance by Josh Brolin) encounters the aftermath of a shootout amongst Mexican drug pushers and Texan criminals. Moss is a bit of an uncarved block – we like him, but we're not exactly sure why. It's later revealed that he's a Vietnam veteran, but not much more is divulged – even through his relationship with his family. He seems to be a smart guy, for he interprets the results of the gunfight like a junior CSI operative, finally following the trail of blood to a tidy suitcase packed with millions of dollars. Unfortunately, he never watched a film by the Coens' good friend Sam Raimi entitled A Simple Plan. Write this down – if you ever find a satchel, duffel bag, briefcase or any sized storage container filled with money, leave it be!

Moss chooses the path most taken, and as calculating and capable as he is, he's not quite prepared for the ensuing fiasco. His wife Carla Jean (Kelly McDonald of Trainspotting fame, completely ditching her Scottish accent for a Texan drawl) is forced to move out of the house as Moss begins a deadly game of chess with the diabolical mastermind Anton Chigurh. Javier Bardem is incredible in this role, sporting a freaky looking mop top supposedly inspired by a photograph of a gentleman brothel client from the late 1800s. Early in the film we watch as he deftly outwits a local police officer and strangles the man with an unnerving coolness. When not using handcuffs, his weapon of choice is a pneumatic cattle gun, which pops locks out of doorknobs as easily as it clears holes through people's heads.

Chigurh is clearly cut from the same cloth as villainous characters such as Lee Van Cleef's 'Angel Eyes' from Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. They both maintain a skewed outlook on what it means to be honorable, and view murder dispassionately, almost as if it were a chore (i.e. people as cattle). Chigurh tries to make things more interesting by implementing an element of chance. In one scene, he makes a gas station owner bet on his own life without the man fully knowing what exactly is at stake. Interestingly, this moment is a shining example of what the Batman character Two Face should have been on the big screen, yet he was sadly butchered in Batman Forever by Tommy Lee Jones.

Jones here plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, and while the other characters are busy trying to outthink the other, he simply approaches this mess with a mixture of intelligence, experience and world-weariness. There's a poignancy to his suffering that becomes the heart of the film. Sadly, the Coens (and I'm assuming original novelist Cormac McCarthy, as this is reportedly a faithful adaptation of his book) decide to shift him into the role of protagonist two thirds of the way through the film. He's a great character as an observer - as a witness and testifier – but as the main guy he's just not that interesting.

The meat of the story rests in the tense game of cat and mouse between Chigurh and Moss (with the eventual inclusion of Woody Harrelson's corporate bounty hunter Carson Wells). There are some fantastic skirmishes between the two, and one hotel based gunfight that spills into the streets below is only rivaled in intensity by an earlier encounter with one helluva fast pit bull. The ultimate twist is that this tour de force showdown is presented as the penultimate face-off – yet it's really the climax of the action within the film.

Up to this point (and even for a stretch beyond), I was digging this movie completely, and was already thinking about where it might settle in my top ten list of the year. This was a bit too presumptuous on my part, for shortly thereafter the film began sidling away from me, smiling as it wandered off into the distance. It kept on moseying into that sunset until I could barely see it waving a cowboy hat at me on the horizon. At this point it was off of my top twenty, for as good as the first two thirds are (they're really, really good), you can't top off an ice cream sundae with a turd and still claim it was a great dessert.

The script (and once again I'm assuming this to mean the book as well) suddenly shifts gears, kicking one character out of the role of protagonist, and inserting a second-tier character in his place. There's a great twist in the way Moss' story is wrapped up, but we're not even allowed to be there as it takes place on screen – in fact the last time we see Moss it's hard to tell it's even him. It's as if the Coens weren't happy enough with their upheaval of audience anticipations, but that they felt it necessary to spit in the faces of those who thought their connection with the 'main character' was going to be rewarded by the story in some fashion.

A lot of people are complaining about the ending of the film, but in most cases they're talking about the final moments before the credits appear. I'm complaining about the ending all the way from the ‘protagonist switch' until the finale. It's not that I'm against turning expectations on their ear with similar moves, since I loved Psycho, Hostel and even Lost Highway (wherein one character actually turns into someone else entirely). But let's be honest, apart from a certain level of subtlety, the remainder of No Country For Old Men is not exactly out there on the fringes, pushing the envelope of narrative structure. In this case it comes across not as brave, but sloppy.

The elemental components of the film's finale make sense and work when considered separately, but the way they're stitched together just doesn't pan out. Chigurh (d)evolves into less of a character than a force of nature – a walking incarnation of ‘the evil that men do' that is not unlike Michael Myers from the Halloween series. The rest of the time we're left with a morose Ed Bell as he ruminates on life and what it ultimately means to keep playing 'the good guy'. Fair enough, but perhaps they could have sprinkled some of this material throughout the bulk of the script instead of shoving it all into the rear. And being the twisted guy I am, I kind of liked the message of quiet despair it delivers – I just think the message got delivered with the gracefulness of a drunken manatee riding a broken, rusty unicycle.

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