No Country for Old Men

I have been trying to see No Country for Old Men for quite a while now. When it came out I had planned to see it with a few friends but something came up and we had to cancel. From then on every time I brought it up I got a "County? Old men? Yea that sounds great. I have never even heard of that movie," type of response. (Yes you know exactly who you are). So despite its rave reviews I was never able to see it. Then, to my surprise the local theater decided to show it again for one more week (after being gone for two weeks). I wasn't missing it this time.

I'm sure you have heard every single critic out there praising this movie, well they all had good reason to. No Country is one of the most original films of 2007. It is an accomplishment that will surely land the Coen brothers into the future film school text books.

The opening scene pans over a vast empty desert (save a few CGI animals), with a Tommy Lee Jones voice over. This voice over sets the tone for the entire movie. Some of my fellow audience members dismissed this scene as senile rambling and paid no attention to it. If you do this, you will not understand and possibly be upset by the seemingly abrupt ending.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, he does amazing as you should expect and obviously nails every line in the movie perfectly. However, there are two stand out performances in No Country that I didn't see coming. Josh Brolin (American Gangster, Planet Terror) is our protagonist Llewelyn Moss. This performance proves to me that Brolin can give just as much depth to a character as his co-star Jones. Although Moss is technically stealing the money he finds (which was likely stolen from someone else in the first place), the audience ends up rooting for him the whole way. You really do want him to escape the clutches of the deranged lunatic Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chigurh wields quite a unique arsenal of weapons. The first is a Co2 tank connected to a tube on the end of a hose, an air-compressed gun. When he opens the valve of this tank and pulls the trigger on his contraption, it shoots out a small steel cylinder with extreme force only to suck it back in instantly. This gun was originally developed to quickly and efficiently kill cattle. He uses this "weapon" mostly to knock out deadbolt locks and enter places he was not intended to be. The other weapon is a silenced shotgun that sounds slightly reminiscent of the T-100's grenade launcher in Terminator 2: Judgement Day with a little hiss before the ammo is actually propelled. Morbidly awesome. Bardem's performance is as engrossing and disturbing as the character he portrays. It represents the mindless, un-negotiable violence that exists in society today.

There is a beautiful lack of soundtrack in No Country. This was an aspect that also may upset the average movie-goer. I thought though, it was a refreshing style of storytelling that fit the motif of the film perfectly. The audience is on edge throughout the duration the movie's running time because the music wont cue their minds to begin or stop the suspense. The sound is borderline masterpiece. Without the distractions of music you are able to hear the delicate thought that was put into every footstep, gunshot, and crash.

This piece of cinema is a gritty, violent, and superbly delivered piece that examines morality itself, suggesting it could all be just as certain as a coin toss. There are some extremely subtle themes underlying throughout this film, so many it could take you quite a few hours of deep reflection to catch them all. If you have a short attention span, don't see No Country for Old Men because it is a slow moving, slowly developing character type of film and you will annoy those of us that are there to appreciate a truly great film by the modern day auteurs Coen. It is not a mindless race a fast car, kill a bad guy with an oozie, blow up a building movie. It requires you to actually pay attention and think, if it is in your mental capacity to comprehend. Sorry Bro.
I will not be surprised in the least if No Country walks away from the Academy Awards with best sound, direction, and adapted screenplay.

4/5 Stars