NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - REVIEW


Back in 2007, The Coen Brothers swept the Oscars with No Country For Old Men, the bleak tale of a man who finds a briefcase full of money only to then be hunted by a madman. Based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, this was a return to darker territory for the Coens after a couple of more light-hearted efforts.

An exploration of young and old, good and evil, right and wrong, No Country For Old Men was maybe Ethan and Joel Coen's most serious and dense film since Miller's Crossing. It stood out mostly thanks to a chilling performance by Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, the psychopath with twisted morals who toys with innocents and kills people with an oxygen tank. Tommy Lee Jones' Texas Sheriff Ed is our good guy who desperately tries to make sense of this new unpredictable brand of evil that has landed on his doorstep and Josh Brolin's everyman Llewelyn is the one in the middle of it all who meant well but doomed himself and others by taking something that didn't belong to him. The film is an intense cat-and-mouse game with Chigurh slowly but surely hunting down his prey.

The thriller encompasses a lot of the themes The Coens have touched upon in the past in films like Blood Simple or Fargo with the simple townspeople finding themselves in the middle of some shady and violent goings-on but No Country For Old Men is a far more pessimistic take than anything they've done before. You never feel like Llewelyn ever stands a chance against Anton and that's because he doesn't: the heroes are completely surpassed by the villains in this story and, even when they show intelligence and resourcefulness, it's still nowhere near enough to match what they're facing. The tone is bleak throughout yet the film is paced so well, is so stylish and all the performances are so good that it never feels like a miserable experience. Plus its intense, suspenseful, almost silent Western-style sequences would make Quentin Tarantino jealous.

No Country For Old Men is certainly a must-see: it's not only one of the best serial killer movies out there but it's one of the smartest, most well-made and sharply written Coen Brothers films, and that's saying a lot. One of the rare cases where the Best Picture winner deserves every Oscar it got.

Masterpiece.

Comments

  1. SamSimonApril 3, 2018 at 9:49 AM

    It's a masterpiece indeed!

    https://vengonofuoridallefottutepareti.wordpress.com/2018/04/03/no-country-for-old-men-wow-english/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT - REVIEW

Image
Finally free from the clutches of the iconic Original Series , Picard and co. finally got their own movie to play with and delivered this much better, much darker, much less gimmicky outing. This time, we're introduced to the Borgs, a race of soulless, zombie-like drones capable of assimilating people completely. A popular race of bad guys in the series, their Hellraiser -style S&M look certainly begged for a movie! First Contact opens with Picard having a nightmare about the time he almost became a Borg forever and little by little, as the current Borg threat increases, he starts to crack up, feeling a responsibility to sort that problem out himself as he still has a slight connection to them but also wanting a kind of revenge, closure if you will, for what they did to him the first time around. The plot sees the crew of the Enterprise witness the Earth get completely assimilated by the Borgs so they go back in time before Earth made its "first contact" with al
Read more

24: SEASON 1 - REVIEW

Image
I know, I'm like 100 years late. But I'm The "Retro" Critic! :P I remember catching a glimpse of this iconic show back in the day and actually finding it pretty entertaining. Sadly, I hadn't followed the thread from the very beginning so it felt like catching the season about halfway through would be a bit of a waste. I decided to wait until I could check it out on DVD. 10 years later... Well I finally made it, that's the main thing, right? So was it worth the wait? What do I make of this very first season? It's good. I thought it would be quite good and it was. Basically I'm rarely taken by a cop-themed series unless you've got a mad scientist in there ( Fringe ), evil twins ( Alias ) or... Columbo ( Columbo ). But 24 did a hell of a good job keeping me entertained throughout and making me care about MOST of what was going on. Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer is a hard one to dislike and is pretty much the glue holding the whole sho
Read more

THE ADDAMS FAMILY MUSICAL - REVIEW

Image
 Looks like every Broadway comedy musical these days is trying to be The Producers ... Mel Brooks' hugely successful show now being the basic template for shows based on movies (with the exception of the admittedly *ahem* unique Spiderman musical), after Dirty Rotten Scoundrels we're treated to Broadway's The Addams Family. An odd release but probably an inevitable one. Not based on any of the movies, the story actually follows up from past adaptations and sees a now grown-up Wednesday falling in love with a "normal" dude and having to face her unconventional family. It's essentially Addams Family Values with Wednesday taking on the Fester role. A good idea which should please both fans of the films and those looking to see something new. But what works for The Producers just doesn't work for everything. Nathan Lane as Gomez Addams? So much for the tall, suave, maniacal Gomez we all know and love! Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane but list
Read more