AT THE MOVIES WITH HALEY ZIMMERMAN
Another Coen Brothers masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, just screams “Oscar!” at the top of its lungs.
In rural 1980s Texas, a hunter near the Rio Grande runs into a few dead bodies, some heroin and a little more than $2 million that, in conjunction, get him into the worst trouble of his life. The hunter is played by Josh Brolin, most recently seen as a dirty cop in American Gangster, and he is being chased by the murderous sociopath Anton Chigurh, portrayed fabulously by Spanish actor Javier Bardem. Throughout the film there are gruesome and bloody encounters between these guys, but never distastefully.
Chigurh is mysterious, complex and an utter psychopath, which, when combined with an equally crazy haircut, make him one of the most memorable characters the Coen Brothers have ever brought life to. This guy is just plain evil, but as is pointed out in the movie, he does have his own principles that he lives by. They are crazy, to be sure, but he thinks they are in the right.
Tommy Lee Jones plays the fitting role of a sheriff who must make his best attempt to catch the killer, but as a tired, old man he finds it difficult to keep up with Chigurh.
This movie is insatiably intense but somehow the characters remain incredibly calm about any situation they come into. Getting shot at in the middle of a desert by a truck-full of angry Mexican drug-runners with shotguns? No problem. Lunatic assassin chasing after you relentlessly? Calmly walk in the other direction. Get the crap kicked out of you? Slap a band-aid on it and come right back for more. While all of this is a bit far-fetched, the film somehow feels realistic, or at least as close to that as a movie like this is going to get.
The Coen Brothers adapted the script from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, and managed to leave much of the dialogue and storyline intact. The script is nothing less than brilliant. Dark to the max and sometimes humorous, each spoken word and action taken leads the story to become one of the most interesting movies to cross the movie screens in years.
No Country for Old Men is essentially a social commentary on how we, as a country, have in the past few decades seen our morals decay to the lowest of lows and that the older, more experienced generations are no longer able to keep us out of the gutter. Well written and directed, not to mention interesting from beginning to end, this is a movie to be seen by anyone who cares to see some good cinematic input on the morality, or lack there of, in this country.
4 STARS!
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