No Country for Old Men

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

Brotherly filmmaking team Ethan and Joel Coen turn its quirky vision onto the wild, wild West of the 1980s as loser Josh Brolin stumbles onto a crowd of deserted corpses in the middle of nowhere, as well as a stash of drugs and $2 million in cash for the taking. After he makes off with the loot, he is stalked by über-evil Javier Bardem (complete with a butt-ugly Dutch boy haircut), who oozes the kind of cold-blooded terror reminiscent of iconic movie villains Hannibal Lecter and Cape Fear's Max Cady. Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones tries to intervene, but nothing is what it seems as blood spills and bodies mount in the Coens' coolest movie since The Big Lebowski. This movie, based on the Cormac McCarthy best seller, was the sensation of this year's Cannes Film Festival. It is a great American film—a dark and sometimes bleakly comic vision of our violent culture. Clearly what the Coens have served up is a thrilling accomplishment, a superior bone-chilling ode to the new West. It keeps you teetering on the edge in a way few movies dare to do anymore. Special mention should go to Roger Deakins' breathtaking cinematography, which captures the Southwest in alternating tones of dark and light. The cast, from Jones and Brolin to the smallest perfectly played character parts, is uniformly fine. And Bardem's work is an Oscar-caliber performance in one of the best films of the year by far.

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