150) No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson

I was at a trivia night a few months ago where they asked the question what was the last film to win the Best Picture Oscar which started and finished with the same letter. They gave the answer as The English Patient. Seems they hadn't updated their questions to take into account No Country for Old Men winning the award in 2008. I don't know why I have chosen to start by sharing that, but it is a little piece of trivia which, at least at the time of writing this, is still correct (though it might not be for much longer if True Grit can pull a swift one on The King's Speech and The Social Network next year).

Out hunting in rural Texas, Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) comes across the scene of what is obviously a drug deal gone violently wrong, with dead bodies strewn everywhere. Not far from the scene Moss finds another body, this one with a briefcase containing $2 million. Rather than report the incident Moss opts to take the money for himself and try and skip town with his wife. Unfortunately this decision puts a psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh (Bardem), on his trail. Chigurh is a man who has no issue with killing anyone and everyone who stands in between him and that money. Looking for both of them is the local Sheriff Ed Tom Ball (Jones).

Javier Bardem's performance as Anton Chigurh stands alongside Heath Ledger's Joker as the greatest villainous performances of the last decade. Chigurh is simply terrifying. The calm, measured way in which he speaks and his cold, emotionally detached approach to his killing is very chilling. What makes the character interesting is the fact that we aren't presented with any real motivation. Presenting a realistic motivation for villains is a key aspect of their characterisation. It is what makes us believe they are real rather than two dimensional, pantomime villains who only do what they do because they are evil. Whether that motivation is greed, passion, revenge, bigotry, we need something in order to understand why they are doing what they are doing. In No Country for Old Men, Chigurh's motivation is not so obviously apparent. We know he has been hired to track down the money, but that explains only why he is in this particular situation, rather than how he became this cold-blooded, seemingly soul-less individual. The fact that Bardem takes this seemingly unstoppable force that is Chigurh and makes him so terrifyingly believable is a credit to him as an actor.

All of the buzz concerning No Country for Old Men when it came out was to do with Bardem, and rightly so. He was great and a worthy Oscar winner. But on a second viewing the performance which caught my attention was that of Tommy Lee Jones. Jones has this amazing face. It is beautifully weathered and says so much. He looks tired and worn down by the world (appropriate given that he is the old man for whom this is no country). He delivers his dialogue, which is very well written, perfectly. Being a sheriff he keeps his emotions in check, but as he is nearing retirement the wight of all the evil he has seen over the years and it has taken its toll on him and he is just done in. A fantastically subtle performance.

Spoiler alert time, if you haven't seen the film and you don't want it ruined, skip this paragraph. The death of Llewelyn Moss amazed me. People were shocked in Hitchcock's Psycho when the film's main character dies only a third of the way into the picture, but at least she got to die on screen. Moss dies between scenes, with Bell showing up to the hotel to find he has been killed. I don't think I've ever seen a main character killed off with so little fanfare before. I don't know why you wouldn't have that death take place on screen, it seems a strange decision, but then maybe that is the point. It catches us off guard the way that it caught him off guard.

My one bone to pick with this film, which I had on my first viewing and I maintain on my second, is that I find the ending a bit unsatisfying. By the ending I mean the last 30mins. The intensity of the film builds to fever pitch and then the event discussed in the previous paragraph occurs and that intensity dies straight off and the film just seems to trail off with a few slow scenes to finish the film. Obviously, this is not meant to be a blockbuster film. It is based on a Cormack McCarthy novel and as such is meant to be more brooding and contemplative, which is definitely what the last part of the film is, but it does feel like a big drop off.

No Country for Old Men is a fantastic film. It looks stunning, contains some of the best written dialogue in recent years and some great performances. It is also the fullest realisation of the Coen brothers' talent to date.