No Country for Old Men

         The spare writing style of author Cormac McCarthy is not easily translatable to the silver screen, which makes No Country for Old Men an astonishing example of a haunting, minimalist novel adapted into an even more barren film. Joel and Ethan Coen, the writer/director team behind Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink, exercise their brilliant filmmaking skills in a stark crime drama that retains the sickening black-comedy of their Fargo while never losing grasp of McCarthy’s bleak Texas atmosphere. And just as the aforementioned Fargo was one of the definitive American films of the 1990s, the Coen Brothers have certainly established No Country for Old Men as a milestone within its own decade. Given the recent Hollywood crime wave following the Oscar-winning masterpiece The Departed, No Country for Old Men is widely considered the frontrunner for the Best Picture Academy Award.

         Police officer Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) of Fargo served as a benevolent counterbalance to the malicious Minnesotan criminals she pursued; Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), the droll West Texas sheriff of No Country for Old Men, is old-fashioned likewise, but is even more startled when confronted with the repulsive capabilities of his fellow man. During the opening lines of the film, Bell reveals that his career of law enforcement is one of family tradition; his father and grandfather were both sheriff of the same county, and after forty years of surveying the desolate landscape of West Texas, Bell is weary and old.

         Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) sweeps across the scorched terrain killing deputies, corrupt businessmen and innocent motel guests in his pursuit of a satchel containing a two million dollar stash. Armed with a fatal oxygen-tank and a variety of guns, the blood trail left by Chigurh is extensive and messy. Bell is neither particularly fascinated nor repulsed by the bloody spectacle; he keeps his distance from the crime scenes until later in the film, and yet still resides as an omnipresent onlooker at the hideous bloodshed. 

         Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a tight-lipped West Texas hunter, is responsible for the missing satchel after coming across the money stash amid a wreckage of unattended vehicles and decaying corpses in the forsaken plains. Llewelyn, realizing his foolish pilfering, jets out of town, ensued relentlessly by the restless Chigurh.  The plot is almost brilliant in its simplicity; initially masquerading as a generic thriller, the exposition ultimately functions as only the starting point for a moody thriller that is every bit as dry as the Texas land on which it occurs.  The Coen Brothers take pride in defying genre conventions; undoubtedly, No Country for Old Men is their best entry into the tragicomic-horror-western genre since Blood Simple.

         The performances are phenomenal from beginning to end. Jones exhibits the drooping bags under his disenchanted eyes in a great performance that illustrates the weight of weariness; his Bell is a disenfranchised character that exemplifies a great deal of McCarthy’s literary heroes. Brolin, also making the rounds in American Gangster, is fantastic as Moss. And in a performance that should take home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Bardem is a terrifying sensation as the maniacal Chigurh, his eyes and veins bulging with intensified fury.

            Above all, this poetically haunting picture is a triumph for Joel and Ethan Coen and a testament to their enduring talent. Where other filmmakers would have opted for a less ambiguous ending and scrapped together a musical score (No Country for Old Men features almost no music whatsoever), the Coen Brothers keep their material deceptively simple in a movie that ranks alongside Into the Wild and Zodiac as one of the best films of the year. No Country for Old Men bemoans the careless brutality of a raw and threatening society where heroes and villains are indistinguishable, and one old man is as lost as the next.

 
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