As a story antagonist, Chigurh is a curious blend of a fetishless Hannibal Lecter and Sam Peckinpah’s Bennie from Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia. He fancies himself a God-like philosopher as exampled in his coin toss for the life of an unknowing gas station attendant, which the attendant wins, but another character later loses, along with that character’s life. Chigurh possesses an obscene code of keeping his promises and doing exactly what he says. He makes it a practice of leaving no witnesses to identify him. He is a perfect killing machine, employing an elaborately suppressed shotgun and pistol and a pneumatic penetrating captive bolt pistol usually employed in livestock slaughter.
Juxtaposed to Chigurh is Bell, who is world weary for having seen everything, wearing this fatigue with the patina that very little surprises him. Jones’ perfectly paced, dead-pan border delivery in this blackest of black comedies should provide him his second Academy Award® nomination (after winning his first in the Fugitive [1993]). Author McCarthy reserved his finest dialogue for Bell in the book and the Coens’ have preserved this for Jones in the film. In the film, Bell is intent on protecting Moss and his young wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) but in the end saves neither. In common, both Chigurh and Bell are focused professionals. Chigurh’s focus is maniacal and Bell’s matter-of-fact. The protagonist and antagonist never cross paths physically to meet, but continually pass through the same spaces. Ultimately, they float apart as before, and Bell realizes that where he lives is no country for old men.
An unsolicited suggestion: read the book and see the film, this way the reader/viewer gets the best of both worlds — the best in American fiction writing and the best in American filmmaking.
Cast:
- Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell
- Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh
- Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss
- Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells
- Kelly Macdonald as Carla Jean Moss
- Tess Harper as Loretta Bell
- Barry Corbin as Ellis
- Stephen Root as Man who hires Wells
- Beth Grant as Agnes, Carla Jean's Mother
Article comments
1 - Mat Brewster
Nice review. I was excited about this film before, but now that I've read this I'm ecstatic.
2 - Triniman
Strange ending, though. A bit of a letdown after all that masterful filmmaking.
3 - C. Michael Bailey
A strange ending indeed, in keeping with McCarthy's in the novel. Admittedly, it is a bit art-house and when leaving the film, I heard the same complaint.
Thinking of the film musically, No Country for Old Men is a post-Romantic tone poem. It is the Coens' Thus Spake Zarathustra to Sam Peckinpah's Verklärte Nacht in The Wild Bunch.
4 - C. Michael Bailey
Actually, that should be the other way around:
No Country for Old Men is a post-Romantic tone poem. It is the Coens' Verklärte Nacht to Sam Peckinpah's Thus Spake Zarathustra in The Wild Bunch.
5 - Phyllis Templeton, Mesa Arizona
If you enjoy seeing innocent blood spilled, villians getting away with murder, good guys retiring rather than fighting crime, long pauses between disjointed scenes, disconnected plot, and being depressed when you leave the movie, THEN YOU WILL LOVE THIS MOVIE.........I was in the theatre with about 20 others and to the last one they all felt as I did.....I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!!!!!! THE COEN BROTHERS CAN SLITHER BACK INTO THE BLACK HOLE FROM WHICH THEY ASCENDED AND TAKE THE NEW YORK TIMES AND ROLLING STONES CRITICS WITH THEM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6 - C. Michael Bailey
A splendid rant. I was not half as impassioned about this film, nor with the dozen or so feel-good films with a gallon or so of sun shining out of their celluloid bottoms. I felt much the same way when I saw Conan the Barbarian and Meet Joe Black.