CINEMA: No Country For Old Men

So you’ve read the hype and seen the awards nominations, but is the Coen Brothers latest slice of cinema really as good as they say? The answer is a resounding yes, but there’s also a very small no in there somewhere.

Based on the thriller by Cormac McCarthy, this is basically a chase story with lots of dark and perilous twists. Out hunting one day in scrubland, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) comes across the scene of a massacre between two gangs of drug smugglers. Thinking there are no witnesses still alive to rat on him, he steals the bag of drug money and goes home, and in doing so sparks off a series of events that will drag in everyone from his unwitting girlfriend (Kelly MacDonald), to a psychopathic assassin and a more charming hitman (Javier Bardem and Woody Harrelson respectively), and the world-weary local Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones).

What Moss can’t know is there is a tracking device within the swag bag and so far from being untraceable, the money’s ‘rightful’ owner knows exactly where it is and he wants it back (and then some) and so has sent an expressionless and unstoppable killer (Javier Bardem) to retrieve it. With Moss being pursued across the country, Sheriff Bell finds himself always one step behind and lamenting at the lawlessness around him.

This being a Coen Brothers’ movie there are odd, unexplained scenes that crop up from time to time, but they fit in perfectly with the underplayed and deadpan feel of the film. There is a sense of despair and inevitability about proceedings that add to the film’s sparse texture, which reflects the sparse countryside of the Texan borderlands.

All the leads are truly excellent, giving incredibly natural performances (the backchat between Sheriff Bell and his deputy is delightful) and we haven’t seen an onscreen killer as decidedly scary as Bardem since Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. Yet, it is another cameo performance that may well resonate in your brain for even longer. This is from Barry Corbin (Maurice from TV series Northern Exposure) as Bell’s uncle Ellis, who in one eloquent scene sums up the whole film as he talks of how Texas has always been lawless.

So, a near perfect piece of cinema with only one small niggle – its ending. Apparently, people who have read the book say the film’s conclusion is one hundred per cent true to the written version, so the Coens can’t be blamed there, but that didn’t stop this viewer at least from feeling ever so slightly short-changed.     Dee Pilgrim