No Country for Old Men
the coen brothers do cormac mccarthy
2007-11-09
By Sergio Mims
CAST:
Tommy Lee Jones; Josh Brolin; Javier Bardem; Woody Harrelson; Kelly MacDonald
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY:
Joel and Ethan Coen
RATED R
** ½ - TWO AND ONE HALF STARS
When it comes to movies, there are perhaps few things as irritating or disappointing as a film which starts off great, building intensity, only to run out of gas and inexplicably fall apart. The Coen Brothers new film, No Country for Old Men. based on the acclaimed novel by Cormac McCarthy, is a perfect example of this type of movie.
For the first 100 of its 120 minutes the film is a near masterpiece. Recalling the sharp characterizations and cynical humor of their best work (Fargo, Blood Simple and Oh Brother Where Art Thou), No County is a nail biter -- tense, grim, violent, exhausting. But, during the last 20 minutes, the film goes so completely off the rails that you're left trying to figure out where things went wrong.
The plot of No Country is stripped down to the bare essentials, purged of any unecessary details. Josh Brolin plays a working class, trailer trash welder who, while hunting out in the desert, comes across the bloody, grisly remains of a drug deal gone bad. Upon discovering $2 million dollars left abandoned by the victims, Brolin takes off with the cash. Given the sinister circumstances under which the money is found, Brolin is smart enough to know that whoever it was supposed to go to will be searching for it and him very soon. What follows is a nerve racking chase with Brolin on the run through sleazy motels and deserted streets. Two outstanding sequences worth mentioning -- one involves a nightmarish after-dark chase across desert and river with Brolin being tracked by shadowy killers in a pickup truck with a couple of man-eating pit bulls and another one which starts off quietly in a motel room, then crashes through the streets of a deserted town.
Brolin has to contend with a Mexican gang hot on his trail and Woody Harrelson as a hit man working for the real owners of the money. But the main villain, and his biggest problem, is Chigurh (Bardem) a brutally violent psychopath out to get the money for himself. Bardem, with his flat expressionless voice and creepy, hooded eyes gives a mesmerizing portrayal of a frighteningly amoral monster. His Chigurh is a horror show capable of exploding into incredible violence with no warning or emotion. Without question one of the greatest screen villains in recent years, Bardem even transforms a simple coin toss into a scary, wearying experience. It is without question one of the great performances by any actor in a film this year and Bardem deserves a best-supporting Oscar.
But, just as the film has been building to what can only be a final violent confrontation between Jones and Bardem, the Coens pull the rug out from under us. In a botched attempt to expand the film from a suspense thriller to a philosophical mediation on violence and humanity we're stiffed on the big climax and, instead, get sheriff Tommy Lee Jones as Greek chorus. What follows is a pretentious series of scenes introducing new characters much too late in the game, and ruminations about the violent world we live in now and the meaning of dreams. Questions are left unanswered, plot details are left unfinished and the basic story is left unresolved.
According to people who have read McCarthy’s book, the film is slavishly faithful to the novel. But often what may work on the printed page can be an on-screen disaster. Two different mediums with their own logic and structure. The end result in No Country therefore is a frustrating and annoying experience. The film, with its superb performances and searing photography by the Coen brothers’ regular director of photography Roger Deakins, starts off as one of the best, if not the best film of the year, and ends as something considerably less.
Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to ebonyjet.com
