By Sara Pintilie/entertainment editor
From the pages of Cormac McCarthy’s novel to the silver screen in the hands of the Coen brothers, No Country for Old Men is a chilling and compelling cat-and-mouse game and one of the best movies of the year.
A Texas hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Planet Terror’s Josh Brolin), stumbles across a gruesome crime scene of a drug exchange gone wrong and $2 million in a briefcase.
He takes the money unaware Anton Chigurgh (The Sea Inside’s Javier Bardem) has been leaving a bloody trail searching for that satchel.
Chigurgh is an enthralling villain. He is like Michael Meyers but with a Lector calmness and chooses his victims like Two-Face.
Chigurgh coolly kills a cop, steals his car and then pulls over some unsuspecting stranger only to murder him with a make-shift weapon. This happens within the first moments of the film and brings Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (The Fugitive’s Tommy Lee Jones) into the picture.
Bell wishes for the good ole days, when charm and a badge caught the bad guys. He doesn’t even bother with a gun most of the time as he tracks down Moss and Chigurgh.
The film is gruesome and tense, but the Coens’ twisted wit isn’t lost. The morbid humor found in their earlier work, Fargo, is present, making the flick flow with ease and giving it a few lighter moments to break up the tense chase.
The whole movie has dark comic sense hovering above it, which softens the blow of Chigurgh’s rampage.
No Country for Old Men spreads over western Texas and showcases the beauty hidden in the middle of nowhere.
Bardem steals the show and then some. He is psychotic and charismatic, all the ingredients to make a memorable serial killer.
His mesmerizing performance is Oscar-worthy and does justice to his novel counterpart.
Brolin’s Moss is a realistic character, which is rare in the hunted role. He is smart, generally nice and well versed in southern weaponry, but he has a characteristic many protagonists in these films lack, genuine fear of who hunts him.
Bell is a typical Jones character; it is pretty much the same cop routine he gives in most of his movies, but, hey, if it works, don’t fix it.
The film is intense but strung together in a way it creates a dark, compelling tapestry viewers can’t tear their eyes away from it.
The only real flaw with the movie is a lag in the last leg. The scene needs to be there and creates the closest allusion to peace the audience ever sees but could have been a little tighter so it doesn’t drag.
No Country for Old Men is a gothic masterpiece and one of the year’s strongest contenders for best film.
