No Country for Old Men (DVD) Review

No Country for Old Men is an excellent, violent genre film that won multiple Oscars this year.   As good as the film is, and as much of a fan I am of the Coen brothers-other films needed an Oscar (like Sidney Lumet's brilliant Before the Devil Knows Your Dead) and deserved it more.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very good, very well made film.

The Coen brothers have taken Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel -which read like something that had to be turned into a film, and partially deconstruct it, stripping it to its essentials and simplifying things.

So that you fully appreciate the film and it's ending that left some people a bit confused-though not unsatisfied-the entire perspective of the film is through Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's perspective.  The sheriff is played by Tommy Lee Jones and he introduces us to the story through narration using lots of West Texas old time vernacular to do it.    I bring this up because, the Coens adapt the Sheriff's perspective on things, even when he's not part of the scenes.   By the time we get to the end, if you have forgotten the Sheriff is the glue that holds this together, you'll be reminded of it again.  The movie is called No Country for Old Men after all, right? 

As if the dialogue wasn't enough Americana poetry for you, Roger Deakins' cinematography is once again a beautiful thing to behold as the entire film seems to be bathed in the colors of golden wheat and shot in rich tones, sometimes a bit darker than you would like, but suited and often in contrast to what we are watching.

It is 1980, and the story is a familiar one.  Something has gone terribly wrong with a drug deal and there are bodies and even a dead dog in the middle of the desert. A hunter Llewelyn Moss (memorably played by Josh Brolin), stumbles upon a horrific scene and someone is still alive.  He takes a big suitcase full of money, leaves the drugs in the back of the pick-up truck and takes off.    Moss has a lot to think about and doesn't explain much of anything to his wife.   When night falls, Moss decides to go back to the scene to help the injured man.  It's a mistake, because the wrong people show up and nearly kill Moss and now he's running for his life.

By this time we have also met a mysterious, methodical, psycho of a hit man, played memorably by Javier Bardeem in a really bad 80s haircut.   He doesn't say much, but often determines the fate of people he comes across with a coin toss. In fact in the very first scene we see him getting arrested, escaping, using a cattle stun gun set up to kill someone and getting back to his business. . .  We aren't quite sure if what he does is random or fairly well planned, but he's such an evil presence we can't stop watching him.

Trying to figure things out is the Sheriff and as he realizes he is dealing with a new kind of criminal, who is perhaps not actually crazy-but rather completely committed to getting the job done without guilt, remorse or feeling, the Sheriff is demoralized.  The world and its values has changed and it's even changed the small towns of Texas that he has known all of his life.   Woody Harrelson eventually shows up as well.

There's a streak of dark, humor that runs through the film.  We get local color that contrasts off some of the characters whose simple ways are satirized in dead-pan fashion.  It's gentler than the Coen Brothers dissection of North Dakota residents in Fargo, but its very much a part of the film.   

There are some stand-out sequences that will remind you of the best moments in Hitchcock films and the best moments of the Coen's early feature: Blood Simple as well as Fargo.  Paired down dialogue, there are moments where the only sound is that of the wind.    It feels very much like a 1950s Anthony Mann Western such as Bend of the River where characters are involved in a cat and mouse, life and death struggle.  

Almost from the first minute, the film is tense with a sense of foreboding.

So if you are not squeamish to violence, this suspenseful film is one not to be missed.

The DVD has several short featurettes that praise the Coens style of directing.  They are in control but never yell or berate people on the set and allow the key people that have worked with them on several people to do their best work without undue interference.   The film is edited by the Coens under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.    Rated R,  122 minutes long.