Rating of
3.5/4
Do you feel lucky?
yogadad - wrote on 12/27/07
Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh gives a scarily memorable performance in this darkly textured morality play. Or perhaps more accurately anti-morality play for the message the Coen's send is that you're never safe. Just riding down the road or going to work is enough to get you killed, if your time has come.
The old man of the title is Tommy Lee Jones who has been sherrif for a good long time and wonders what the world has come to. He reads stories from the local newspaper about senseless acts of violence aloud to his deputy. The story elicits a chuckle because it so outlandish. The deputy catches himself but Jones remarks that he laughed to the first time he read it. But there is nothing funny about what's going on in the county that Jones polices. Bardem is an assassin hired to track down Brolin, who found $2 million from a drug deal gone bad. Brolin grabs the money and runs. Soon Bardeem, Harrelson (another hired killer), and a bunch of Mexicans are on his tail.
The film is filled with characters who make one bad decision after another. Yet it is those bystanders who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time that give the film its power. It's a film that will stay with you long after you leave the theater.
Recent Comments
Alex - wrote on 12/27/07 at 02:11 PM CT
No Country for Old Men Review comment
I don't have a problem with the way it ended and I have no problem with the coen's trying to make it real. I have a problem that it ended on a boring, 10 minute long dream story that I didn't care about. Tommy Lee Jones babble was unnecessary in a film that had only necessary pieces. Showing him in a way that made it appear just as you described would have been much more interesting than him telling a dream.
I also had a problem with the disappearance of Josh Brolin and the death of …
