This past weekend, I saw two movies that featured similarly disturbing and emotionless violence (and then, thankfully, I watched Scarecrows, which provided some much needed comic relief). This was the second one — I’m still attempting to process the first mentally before I try to write about it (gimmie one more day. . .).
This brilliantly-paced and beautifully-filmed movie, the latest by the Coen Brothers, is about a bunch of bad guys in the desert chasing each other over a bunch of stolen drug money. Well, that’s the short version, anyway.
Here’s the long version: Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin, who really needs to do a romantic comedy next, if you ask me) is out hunting one afternoon when he comes across a peculiar sight — a group of about five pick-up trucks parked in a scattered circle on the valley below him. He decides to head down to check it out, and our first inkling that he’s no ordinary guy comes when he gets closer to the scene, sees that it’s riddled with dead bodies, and doesn’t even bat an eyelash. Perhaps he’s a man who’s seen this sort of thing before? Methinks he is.
After poking around a bit, he finds A) a man who is still alive and begging for water; and B) a flatbed full of heroin. A few minutes later, he also finds two million dollars in cash inside a suitcase next to another dead guy. He takes the cash and heads home, and our first inkling that maybe he’s not ALL bastard comes when later in the evening, he’s apparently touched by a sense of guilt about leaving the thirsty near-death guy behind without helping him, and he fills a jug with water and heads back. Knowing full well how thoroughly dumb (in other words, dangerous) that decision was.
While all this is going on, another story has begun to run on a parallel track. This one features a quiet man with a VERY silly haircut named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who carries around a tank of compressed air with a cattle stun gun attached to it. When people get in his way, he puts the gun up to their head and pulls the trigger, releasing a blast of air that shots a metal rod into their skulls and then pulls it back out again. PfftPOW! The first murder of this nature made me gasp out loud, I will confess — damned if I’ve never seen anything quite like that before. But eventually, we get used to it, as the bodies slowly start to pile up. It soon becomes clear this quiet man is a hired killer out to get that money back from Moss, and he has absolutely no intention whatsoever of doing anything besides just that.
The bulk of this movie involves Moss scurrying from one hotel room to the next trying to elude Chigurh, while Sheriff Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) follows closely on both their heels (although, alas for the many victims of Chigurh, not closely enough). One of the things that struck me about these chase scenes was the speed with which Moss would run and the emotionless, steady plod of Chigurh behind him. My first thought was, naturally, of Jamie Lee Curtis vs. Michael Myers in Halloween — she runs, he plods, and yet he always, ALWAYS catches up. Is there anything more terrifying than a killer who isn’t in a hurry? Who is so confident he’ll eventually take care of you that he’s perfectly content to move at a comfortable pace?
Actually, yes, there is. Because, as with the other movie I saw this weekend that I haven’t reviewed yet, the truly terrifying thing about Chigurh isn’t really his confidence in getting the job done — it’s our complete inability to comprehend him as a “normal” human being in any way whatsoever. He’s not even “evil,” really — that implies some sort of passion for doing wrong. He’s just. . . nothing. He’s nothing at all. Noth. ing.
Various of his victims attempt to reason with him, some quite legitimately, and the most generous option he’s able to offer them is to determine their own fate based on the flip of a coin. And it’s not because he enjoys tormenting them, as offering someone that option would surely do. He hasn’t chosen the coin flip based on its arbitrary, and thus even more terrifying, nature. It’s just because, well, that’s kind of all he could come up with. He said he’d kill them, and he can’t just not do it — why would he? And so the only option he can give them is fate. Which, even at a rate of 50/50, isn’t much of a comfort when you’re sitting across from a dude with a tank of compressed air and a disarmingly stoic expression.
I gots chills.
The other night, I asked my husband if he’d finished watching the movie yet so I could send it back to Netflix, and we got to talking about it. When I said I’d really liked it, he grimaced and muttered, “What the hell’s the point of a movie like that?” What’s the point of a movie, in other words, in which nothing goes right for anybody? It’s a question I’d already been asking myself after seeing that Other Movie over the weekend, and while I can answer it for that one (much as I resist the answer — more on that in the next review), I’m not sure I’ve come up with anything much for this one.
In some ways, it almost seems like it’s a movie about the futility of human emotions when put up against someone or something or some entity that has no real sense of justice. Maybe it’s a commentary on the gradual loss of social morals — we’ve stopped saying “Sir” and “Ma’am,” according to Sheriff Bell, and so maybe this is where we should expect to find ourselves. Except, at the same time, it seemed to be about people who made choices based on what seemed to them to be a total lack of choice. And how can we be held responsible for choosing the only option we were aware we had in a given situation?
Ultimately, however, while I can’t tell you WHY, I can tell you this movie really impressed me. It’s beautifully, expertly made and the acting — whew. Honestly, there’s just no one better than Tommy Lee Jones when it comes to playing a world-weary cop — I love that man. And Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem are also extremely effective in their parts. Actually, until I saw him in Planet Terror a year or so ago (where he also plays a mustachiod tough guy, hence my desire to see him change things up with a rom-com next), I hadn’t really seen Josh Brolin since Goonies, I don’t think. The man’s totally blowing my mind. Make him stop.
In any case, I definitely suspect this one will make it on my list of Top Ten Movies Seen in 2008, and I’m also planning on picking up the novel as soon as possible to see whether I enjoy it any more or less than the movie. Incidentally, if you rent this on DVD, don’t miss the “making of” special feature, in which Tommy Lee Jones attempts to classify No Country for Old Men as a “comedy.” Snort.
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Genre: Drama
Cast: Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Barry Corbin, Beth Grant