No Country for Old Men

No Country For Old Men is a an adaptation by Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen, of a novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy.

No Country for Old Men is a great movie with a slow plot and a great cast and a horrible ending. For a reference to all the men in the house, the ending is exactly like the Sopranoes (unresolved to a heinous degree), and unfortunately for both, that’s not a spoiler. The film starts off with hunter Lewelyn Moss (Goonies’ Josh Brolin), discovering the site of a herion deal gone wrong deep in the Texas sand dunes deep off the beaten path. He snatches the satchel loaded with two million dollars, and soon finds himself being chased by a maniac with a compressed air cattle gun, Anton Chigurh (an amazing Javier Bardem), and a local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). 

Josh Brolin stars as the redneck Moss, a good old country boy who still stays at the crappiest hotels despite having millions in cash on his lap. Brolin was unemotional yet endearing, a must for such a simplistic character. But the main force behind the film was Javier Bardem as the menacing, sociopathic, darkly dressed Chigurh, a role that should be ranked alongside the all time villains of cinema history. 

With a horrifying stare and odd accent, Chigurh becomes the personification of a constant fear, an pursuer that can never be stopped. Furthermore the air cattle gun is decidedly awesome, and probably the greatest weapon used by a single antagonist in a film. 

The film opens with a voice over from the Sheriff, reciting this monologue:

"I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would have operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "Okay, I'll be part of this world.""

The majority of this scene involved non-diagetic sound, aside from the occasional cricket chirp, car door shutting, and driving. The voice over and its content secures the theme of the film as well as initially grasping the interest of the audience: 'who is the man getting into the car? Why is there someone in as sheriffs uniform? What's in that metal canister? Who's speaking and why?' being questions that the audience may initially feel inclined to ponder over.

While other thrillers usually begin with introducing the protagonist, possibly sitting in some boring nondescript bar, a perfect victim for fate to attack with the events that a Thriller movie entail, this movie introduces the antagonist first (and his awesome choice of weapon).

Overall I enjoyed this movie, if we just forget the horrifically handled ending even existed, the movie was wonderful.