2007--No Country for Old Men, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

 

2007--No Country for Old Men, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Nominated: Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will be Blood

Should have won: No Country for Old Men

Be sure to see: Cloverfield, The Condemned, Grindhouse, The Host, Into the Wild, 30 Days of Night

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, what good is the rule?”--Anton Chigurh

     Joel and Ethan Coen provided me with my funniest movie of all time in 1987 with Raising Arizona, one of the best movies of the 1990s with Fargo, and the best Oscar winning movie of the new century so far with No Country for Old Men. It is a relentless chase movie, essentially. The Coens call it a movie about a good guy, a bad guy, and a guy in between.

    In the wide open Texas desert, hunter Lewellen Moss stumbles upon a crime scene. Dead bodies, heroine, and a briefcase with $2 million are littered about. After taking the cash and having a near death experience with the perpetrators' dog, Moss is pursued by Anton Chigurgh, one of the most indiscriminate killers in movie history; one character compares him to the bubonic plague. After escaping custody he kills random people, taking their cars. His weapon of choice is unlike any I've ever seen in a movie. No bullet is found yet there is no exit wound. This bit of news confuses Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Chigurgh is also the only person I've ever seen put a silencer on a shotgun. Taking up the rear in this chase is the good guy the Coens were talking about, Sheriff Bell, a man on the verge of retirement. Also involved in the mix is a bounty hunter looking for Chigurgh named Carson Wells who understands the type of man Chigurgh is.

    Many people feel the movie belongs to Javier Bardem in his (deserved) Oscar winning role as the psychotic killer but I feel Josh Brolin as Moss gets the movie rolling. Though Chigurh is relentless, Moss is pretty tough himself, though a few of his decisions were not thought out too well, particularly the scene where he decides to bring water to a dying man. It is such a ridiculous thing to do it made me wish it wasn't a part of the movie. But then I realize it has to be in order to get the ball rolling.

    Complaints I've heard of the film are the dialogue being hard to understand because everyone mumbles, the death of one key character is too abrupt, and that weird abrupt ending. As for the ending, it might be the worst ending I've ever seen to a great movie, certainly the most abrupt (though An American Werewolf in London gets a nod for abruptness). I saw it in the theater twice and both times when it ended everyone said “What the hell?” or booed. The abruptness of one character dying, the vagueness of what happens to the villain, and the poor ending are lingering questions but don't really set the movie back a single step.

    The movie is like a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Chigurh tracking Moss because of a homing device in the briefcase. By the time Moss discovers it, Chigurh is right on his tail. In one of the best scenes, after a shootout between the two, Chigurh is injured goes to a drugstore to get supplies to heal his wounds. The distraction he creates to get in is creative and exciting.

   The movie is set in 1980 which might explain why it was so easy for him to get in the back or why the border between the United States and Mexico is so laid back. Most scenes in the movie stand out but pretty much every moment Chigurh is in strikes a chord. He has a sinister way of deciding who to kill. He will flip a coin, tell the person to call it, and depending on what side lands, the fate of the person is made. One particular piece of dialogue between him and a gas station attendant reads brilliantly. Chigurh's advice to the man on what to do with the coin might stick with the man until the day he dies.

    No Country for Old Men is definitely worth a look and deserving of the Oscar, thought There Will Be Blood fans might have a word or two about that. I preferred the winner. I loved the mood the movie produces. It just has an ending that is either completely appropriate or one of the worst of all time, depending on your outlook. You can form your own opinion or you can flip a quarter and call it.