The Cutting Room Floor: No Country for Old Men
Today I’m going to talk about a film that’s been getting a lot of critical acclaim. I know, I know, ‘critical acclaim’ tends to be Hollywoodspeak for artistic crap but there are exceptions. Pulp Fiction was critically acclaimed and it was chock full of blood, violence and Uma Thurman. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was critically acclaimed and introduced the western world to Ang Lee and while the movie had it’s moments of pure eastern spiritualism it still stands as one of the great action packed films of the last decade.
Now comes No Country for Old Men. The Cohen Brothers (O’ Brother Where Art Thou, The Big Labowski, Fargo) bring the novel by Cormac Mccarthy to life. A drug deal in the middle of the desert goes wrong leaving several dead bodies, A truckload of Heroin and two million dollars in cash and a dead dog (which is pointed out by just about everyone that sees it). The first to find it all is Llewellyn Moss played by Josh Brolin (Planet Terror, American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah). Llewellyn steals the money with the plan on keeping it and soon finds himself being tracked by the very creepy and insane Anton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem (Goya’s Ghosts, Life in the Time of Cholera). Also after Llewellyn are the Mexican Cartels, a local Sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones and the firm that originally brokered the drug deal.
Even though the movie was pretty much one long game of hide and seek the script along with the acting are what makes this movie so amazing to watch. Javier Bardem does such a good job as Chigurh that you find yourself truly creeped out whenever he comes on the screen. You find yourself wondering if he’s going to kill everyone that he meets and at one point it comes down to a toss of a coin whether he kills or not. The soul of the movie however, is Tommy Lee Jones’ character Ed Tom Bell. He’s a small town sheriff questioning if the world has passed him by as the body count rises and the killings become more brutal.
The only problem I had with the movie was the last half hour. This is where the film enters the world of ‘art’. With the situation resolved the last half hour is spent wandering aimlessly from one character to the next and when the movie fades to black I was left with a very ‘Sopranos’ taste in my mouth. Even with that said the movie is amazing up to that point and well worth seeing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see several Oscar nominations for No Country when the time comes.
Richard Carroll is an avid movie viewer and all around fanboy. You can probably find him at his computer playing Guild Wars when not watching,writing, reading or roleplaying something (Oh and then there’s the real world and work). Check out some of his written works at www.ficofthedead.com. A website in need of a webmaster to ensure it gets updated. (Any takers? Anyone? *grins*)