[MOVIE] No Country for Old Men

[Emperor]

Ever been to a movie where it ends and you are like "WTF was that?" and about an hour later it all comes clear? This was what this movie is like. If you are a fan of the Coen Brothers (Big Lebowski, Fargo, Raising Arizona) then this movie is a must see.... however be warned this is more like Fargo than BL. It is a also pretty violent so if you are not a fan of this in your movies then I would suggest staying away (go see Enchanted).

 

If you do decide to check this one out, go in leaving preconceptions on how a linear movie should progress. Don't make a decision about the movie right away but discuss it with others that have seen it so you can appreciate what this film is trying to do.

 

I would place this movie in my top 10 for 2007.

 

November 9, 2007 -- 'NO Country for Old Men" is the first movie I've seen in a very long while that deserves to be called a masterpiece. It's such a stunning achievement in storytelling that, when the DVD comes out, I'd wager you could even turn off the sound and hardly miss a thing.

 

This really isn't a movie to watch on DVD, though.

 

You need as big a screen as possible to savor Roger Deakins' sweeping cinematography, which is as integral to the movie's triumph as the edge-of-the-seat direction by Joel and Ethan Coen - or a trio of unforgettable performances by Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones.

 

Adapting (and, if you ask me, surpassing) a 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy into their best-ever movie and their first Best Picture contender since "Fargo," the Coens deliver a classic, neo-noir Western of innocence lost set in 1980 Texas.

 

The film's moral center is Jones' Sheriff Bell, about ready to retire after watching the Mexican border turn red with drug trade. With a face as deeply etched as Mount Rushmore, Bell surveys the massive carnage from a heroin deal gone bad on the Texas prairie with disgust and resignation.

 

We've already seen an earlier visitor to the same shootout scene, a hunter named Llewelyn (Brolin) who discovers $2 million in cash in a satchel and is foolish enough to think he can keep the money and live to tell about it.

 

Bell has been around long enough to know Llewelyn is a gravely marked man. One of his deputies who arrests a man looking for the money ends up garroted by his own handcuffs.

 

The killer (Bardem), who sports a Prince Valiant haircut and invites some of his victims to flip a coin to determine their fates, is dubbed a "ghost" by the baffled sheriff.

 

Not only is he virtually impossible to track, but it takes quite a while for Bell to even figure out this psychopath is grotesquely killing people with a compressed-air gun normally used to slaughter cattle.

 

Bardem's character, Chigurh, is by contrast ruthlessly efficient at tracking down not only poor Llewelyn but his understandably terrified wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald).

[Tenshin_Xo]

A good friend of mine saw it and said that this was an excellent movie, but its lack of a definite ending disturbed him.  In either case he highly reccomended it to me, and it's on my list to watch.

[Emperor]

Almost everyone in the theatre was shocked at the seemingly abrudt stop.  They wanted a final showdown or something.  They EXPECTED a final showdown because movies condition them to want this.  This wasn't a story about that.  It was the story of why a good cop felt it was time to hang up his guns.  There WAS an ending, just not the one we wanted. 

 

See it for the acting if nothing else.  I highly expect a few acting Academy Award nods from this film. 

 

Again I walked out confused.  I walked out unsure if I even liked it.  I reflected on it and talked about it with Yveva over the next few hours and slowly realized the genius of the film.