The guys behind the drug deal want their drugs and their money back, and they send some pretty bad fellas to do it. One of them is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) one of the blackest, most sadistic characters to hit the screen since Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. In fact he carries around a canister of compressed air that resembles Hopper's gas-filled canister from that film. Chigurh's canister is for another purpose, though; it powers a device used to kill horses which he uses for his own deadly means. He comes after Llewelyn with a vengeance, stopping for no one, and unafraid to brutally kill anyone who tries.
That's all of the plot I'm giving away except to say it builds into a violent, bloody end. The end is actually a point that many people seem to have a problem with. It isn't very Hollywood, and it isn't satisfying in the standard sort of way, but for my money it ended in the only way it could.
Tommy Lee Jones got top billing though his screen time is much less than the other two leads. Listen to him closely though, for the film is all about him and how he changes from the beginning to the end. It is a movie that is all about fate and chance and how good doesn't always triumph over evil, and how that has never really been the case.
Jones plays the part with restraint and the long shadow of regret. He is perfect as an old man who doesn't quite understand what's become of the Texas of his dreams and memories. Brolin likewise does a masterful job as a man willing to sacrifice everything to get ahead, to live the dream. It is Bardem, however, who fills the screen in every shot. I don't know where this guy has been all my life, be dang me if I won't be watching his every film from here on out.
The brothers Coen, as always, pay a great deal of attention to detail and have created a nuanced, intense film with No Country for Old Men. I saw it three days ago and it is still resonating within my skull. It isn't an easy film to watch. It is complicated and violent and slow in spaces. But it is a film worth watching, and contemplating, and watching again.
Article comments
1 - James
Can anybody see Chigurh as America interacting with the rest of the world?Anybody?
2 - D.I.C (Died in Cinema)
This film is a bag of shit, do not watch it even once. Let alone "contemplating, and watching again."
After the film ther was silence and more silence. then it was finally over. and do u know what the last words of the movie were?
"And then i woke up" Congradufuckinglations 5 stars