No Country for Old Men

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Cast: Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones

Like the Coen brothers’ classics of yore, it’s difficult to classify noir-80s-period-Western No Country, but the good news is that it sees a real return to form for the directors.

It’s a fairly standard set-up: Llewellyn Moss (Brolin) is a Texan yokel who comes across a case containing $2 million cash, which he decides to keep. Anton Chigurh (Bardem) is the eccentric hitman sent to recover it. Ed Tom Bell (Jones) is a near-retirement Sheriff who is half-heartedly looking for both men.

But the conventions are left behind as the focus shifts between these principal players. Driving it all is Llewellyn’s attempt to make good his escape. Eerily accompanied by a near-silent soundtrack, he burrows through a network of seedy hotels whose misery is cast into relief by the starkly beautiful Texan landscape. (Hats off again to Roger Deakins!) The film manages to be both unspeakably tense and grimly hilarious as Chigurh closes in on his quarry.

Good as Brolin and Jones are, it’s Bardem’s psychopath who lingers in the mind. He’s obsessed with chance, and endowed with the sense of purpose and the vulnerability of a T800. His exotic dialogue is delivered in deadpan, otherworldly tones; his weapons of choice are an air-powered bolt (the kind used to kill cattle in abattoirs) and a shotgun with a silencer; his hairdo lends him the air of a terrifyingly demented lego-man.

This is by no means a film for the squeamish, or for those slavishly committed to conventional resolutions. It may be less accessible than Fargo or The Big Lebowski, but for mine it’s lyrical, gripping, funny, and haunting — in short, vintage Coen.