No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men is the latest film brought to us by the Coen Brothers (Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?), and based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. The film focuses on three characters in the year 1980. The first, is Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) a Vietnam vet. Early in the film he finds a drug shoot out and two million dollars. Anton Chigurh (Bardem) is a hired killer on his trail to get this money back. Finally there's Sheriff Bell who examines the brutal crime scenes left by Chigurh.

Sheriff Bell describes Chigurh as ghostlike. From his perspective, this is an apt term. He finds the aftermath left by Chigurh, and never encounters him directly. To back this up, Moss' first encounter with Chigurh never involves Moss gazing upon him, but only his gunfire. In the characters' eyes, Chigurh could be seen as supernatural. Much of this is do to Bardem's stoic, but calculatedly so, performance. He imposes a menacing figure that I found more frightening than any horror movie villain.

Though this film contains a great deal of violence, One of the most suspensful scenes involves none. Chigurh at a gas station tells an elderly clerk that he stands to win or lose everything on a coin toss. The clerk does not understand this, but Chigurh explains how the coin has traveled from 1958 to that clerk in 1980 and now it will decide everything in that moment. Much of Chigurh's outlook is shaped by this kind of fatalism. He is unconcerned in his killings because he doesn't accept personal responsibility for them. Those who die at his hands were fated to die regardless of his actions. Chigurh, in this way, lives a guiltless life, and It is this view and the consequences of it that disturb Sheriff Bell so greatly. He needs to see a reason why all these people had to die. To see the proximate causes that would lead to such tragidies, but these causes are never given to Bell.

Sheriff Bell is interesting because we encounter him so little. When we do his role is almost always inactive, though he is the only character we get narration from. Although it wouldn't be right to call Bell a coward, he tries little to stop Chigurh or help Moss. This inactivity is what has kept Bell alive far longer than his father who was also a sheriff and was killed at a much younger age than Bell is. Despite the fact that we see him little, Jones brings great delivery to a quick witted though disturbed character.

Halfway through the film we are introduced to Carson Wells (Harrelson), a former Colonial. He is the cleanest looking character in No Country, and he reminds me of the calvary arriving in the film. He has come late, but in the knick of time to save Moss if Moss will allow him. A lesser story would have allowed Wells or he and Moss to triumph over Chigurh. I won't go into details, but viewers should not go into the movie expecting a Hollywood ending.

Despite that Chigurh is presented ghostlike, we are shown several examples of his mortality. In one of the first scenes we encounter him he strangles an officer to death with handcuffs that are locked around his wrists. After the officer is dead, we are shown Chigurh's wrists and they are bloody. This is the most frightening aspect of Chigurh. Unlike Boogey Men, we cannot dismiss Chigar to a level of fiction that we may never encounter in our own lives.

I rank No Country For Old Men as the best film of 2007, and possibly the best film by the Coen Brothers to date. I give it an enthusiastic recommendation.