In 2007 brothers Ethan and Joel Coen were responsible for yet another film masterpiece with “No Country For Old Men”. The thriller takes you straight to rural west Texas in the 1980’s, where you follow three characters as they weave in and out of each others trails. The visibly disturbing psychopathic bounty hunter Anton brilliantly played by Javier Bardem opens with an up-close and personal choke scene at the local police station. The old-timer-ready-to-retire cop Ed Tom Bell played by Tommy Lee Jones investigates a drug deal gone wrong with the timely departure of Llewelyn Moss played by Josh Brolin. With two million dollars in cash neatly wrapped in a black leather Llewelyn decides to grab the dough and his wife and leave town. While Anton searches for Lewelyn and the cash he continuously quenches his thirst killing anyone in his way. With Lewelyn on the run and Anton leisurely chasing, Bell follows closely behind with an enlightening commentary and young curiosity for the new case.
The film carries a small amount of dialogue creating and constant tension. From the very second it starts you are stuck. Stuck sitting and trying to figure out this killer and the times. Tommy Lee Jones opens the film with a voice over where he introduces his role with a glimpse of some really deep shit that is about to unfold over the next 122 minutes. Jones says, “You can’t help but compare yourself against the old timers. Can’t help but wonder how they would’ve operated these times. There was this boy I sent to Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killed a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn’t any passion to it. Told me that he’d been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he’d do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. Be there in about fifteen minutes. I don’t know what to make of that. I surely don’t. The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job – not to be glorious. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. You can say it’s my job to fight it but I don’t know what it is anymore. More than that, I don’t want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I’ll be part of this world.” To “be a part of this world” would require a man to “put his soul at hazard”. That end thought is enough to make your head hurt. Spend two hours wandering your mind with that one.
Anton is a character that really makes you sick to your stomach. He is cold and calculated. With the emotionless killing he makes you hope he’s only a character. Hope that no one could ever possibly operate like that. He enjoys what he does. You can see it in his eyes and in his sick smirk. He follows Llewelyn and makes one thing very clear. He has something that doesn’t belong to him. So consider yourself dead. Anton stops at nothing to get to Llewelyn who seems oddly unshaken by this hit-man. Ed spends his days inching closer and closer to protecting Llewelyn but falls short. In this film no one wins. Everyone loses. Even Llewelyn’s poor-helpless-noninvolved wife. "No Country for Old Men" is a comment on death. It’s one thing we all have in common. Every path is different. Some right and some definitely wrong. No matter what the path or who the hell is on it, one thing is certain. It ends. For everyone. The film is deep enough that one viewing just breaks the surface. The opening and closing dialogue in it is worth hearing alone. The Coen brothers managed to take you back to an unfamiliar place. The setting is beautiful and beyond convincing. It’s quiet and slow. Uncomfortable. The cast was phenomenal especially given the light dialogue. This award winning Coen brothers film was another hit that deserves to sit next to Fargo and The Big Lebowski.
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