No Country For Old Men

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) will haunt your dreams. He has all the traits of your typical villain: cold, calculating, emotionless, and a little bit strange. However, Bardem’s performance makes Chigurh atypical in the sense that whenever he appears on screen, your bones are chilled. With his strange air-powered weapon, Chigurh plows through the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men with no remorse and no prisoners.

The film starts you in West Texas at the beginning of the 1980s; a time where the way justice is served is changing, according to a narrative by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). Sheriffs never used to wear guns but now times are more dangerous and the business of drugs has found its hiding place in the desolate countryside. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles unknowingly into this violent world one day and discovers what’s seemingly a drug deal gone wrong. Moss makes the big mistake of taking a large sum of money from the crime scene, and this one decision sends him spiraling into a world of fear, hiding, and ruthless violence.

Chigurh is in charge of finding said money, sending him on a kill-all-that-stand-in-his-way mission to find Moss. Meanwhile, sheriff Bell is using his laid-back variation of law enforcement to solve the drug-deal crime scene and find Chigurh, knowing that Moss is not safe, whether he is in possession of the money or not.

No Country is Ethan and Joel Coen’s twelfth movie together, and it delivers with a startling, nerve wracking punch. Translating a novel to the big screen is not an easy task and the Coens do Cormac McCarthy justice with their cinematic version. It is a violent film that is centered on killing; however, the viewer is warned immediately by Sheriff Bell’s introductory voice-over in the movie. This isn’t your old man’s Texas. This is a new, violent Texas where you have to be careful who you cross. Vigilantism is the name of the game, and you have to be prepared to play.

The main draw of the film is that the Coen brothers allow, almost even require, the viewer to construct their own meaning from the film. There aren’t any “a-ha” moments or themes shoved in your face to make you understand. Rather, No Country is a film rife with beautiful subtleties and nuances that are fairly uncommon in big Hollywood cinema today. No Country also defies Hollywood convention by being over two hours long, but its one of those films that is captivating enough not to bore the viewer with its length. And it is captivating not in the edge-of-your-seat, what’s-going-to-happen-next way, but in a way that leaves the viewer intrigued and thinking. A film that inspires constructive thought is a beautiful thing.

Speaking of beauty, the film was shot mostly on location in New Mexico with a few scenes in Texas. The cinematography is done marvelously, capturing the breathtaking desolate landscapes of the Southwest, adding to the themes of desperation and feeling lost.

One downfall some may find in the film is that the Coen brothers are not a fan of resolution. There is nothing tidy and neat about No Country. The narrative spills all over like the blood of Chigurh’s victims. But this is the Coen brothers’ intention. They’re going for the broader picture rather than a clearly linear narrative. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t seem to mind, having handed No Country nominations for 8 Oscars.

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