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| by Beth E. Cochran with additional writing by John Mundazio | ||
| Paramount's ‘No Country For Old Men’— Powerfully Riveting. | ||
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In the "Oprah-approved"
author Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel No Country For Old Men, an aging
small town Texas sheriff ruminates about the scary new world he finds
himself living in, complete with new crimes committed by new breeds of
criminals he’s unsure he’s able to face. Meanwhile, good old boy
Llewelyn Moss finds a satchel full of millions of dollars in the midst
of a cross-the-border drug deal-turned-Mexican standoff gone very wrong,
and takes it— a move sure to sic the money’s rightful owners on him.
What follows is a three-way chase, with Llewelyn on the run with the
money, a mysterious, unstoppable killer on trail, and the law pursuing
them both. It’s a pretty simple, even shallow story, but McCarthy’s a
subtle talent, and he fills seemingly negative story space with implied
meaning and dramatic import in a way that gradually catches up with the
reader. The author’s trademark spare storytelling and hands-off approach
to visuals and world-building— character descriptions never go any
farther than maybe hair or eye color in this particular book, and almost
everything but the dialogue and plot are left to the readers’
imagination— provides a perfect vacuum for filmmakers to fill,
particularly when the filmmakers have the sort of quirky talents that
have made the Coen Brothers’ body of work so distinctive. Of the characters, the Coens
seem to have the most in common with Bardem’s Chigurh, in terms of
brutal efficiency and unique delivery. The outcome of the film, and the
ends of many of the characters, seems somewhat certain from rather early
on, which rather than spoiling actually increases the tension— doom is
surely coming, but its time and method are unknown. The Coens, like
McCarthy, constantly subvert expectations, as the story doesn’t play
quite like you’d come to expect such narratives to from too much time
spent at the movies. |
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Beth
E. Cochran is a nationally syndicated journalist as well as the
illustrious West Coast Editor for UPBEAT Entertainment News Online. She
has written for several prominent entertainment publications including
Entertainment Weekly, Soap Opera Update, and Soap Opera Magazine, to
name but a few. Beth is currently working on several screenplays. |
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The
film opens with a shot of desolate, wide-open country in West Texas
in June of 1980. In a voice over, the local sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy
Lee Jones), tells of the changing times: In the old days, some sheriffs
never wore guns, as did his late father, who was the sheriff before him;
in the modern day and age, however, Bell once sent an unrepentant
teenage boy to the electric chair who had killed a girl simply because
he wanted to kill someone, had been "fixin'" to do it for some time, and
would do it all again if he had the chance. A man named Anton Chigurh
(played perfectly by Javier Bardem) is being arrested by a deputy (Zach
Hopkins). Back at the otherwise empty police station, the deputy
describes over the phone Chigurh's strange possession... a compressed
air cattle-gun. The deputy is on the phone with Sheriff Bell, but has
his back to Chigurh, who sneaks up behind him and then garrotes him with
his handcuffs. Chigurh falls back on the floor with the deputy, a
strange grin washing across his face, as his wriggling victim finally
expires. After cleaning himself up in the station bathroom, Chigurh
pulls over a man in a Ford with the deputy's police car. Politely asking
the man to step out the car, Chigurh puts his hand on the man's head
like a faith-healer and shoots the cattle gun through the man's skull.
Chigurh then drives off in the man's car. Pretty powerful stuff no
matter how you slice it.
The
brothers follow McCarthy’s novel as faithfully as possible, making
precious few changes. Most of those seem to be made to allow for the
transfer to a different medium (The sheriff’s first-person narration
scenes, for example, are cut up and placed into conversations with other
characters), although a few serve to ratchet up tension. There’s still
plenty of room to inject themselves and their style into the narrative,
however. The visual component so absent from the prose is filled in with
relish, as the Coens and cinematographer Roger Deakins capture the
desolate Texas deserts and highways in the film’s opening sections,
before gradually building a nighttime world of pitch black wilderness,
drive-up motels and eerily empty streets. Their cast is full of real
character-characters, as the best Coen movies usually are, each brought
to life through a combination of charismatic performance and eccentric
costuming. Josh Brolin plays Moss, a stoic, silent everyman type who’s
hard to read behind his moustache. Those pursuing him include Javier
Bardem as hired psycho killer Anton Chigurh, a black clad elemental
force who wears his hair like a mop-top Beatle and carries a pneumatic
cow slaughtering device with him everywhere he goes; Tommy Lee Jones as
the craggy-faced sheriff trying to make sense of the escalating body
count while trading police procedural witticisms with his deputy; and
Woody Harrelson as a cocky bounty hunter-hunter in grays and powder
blues. 
While
almost every word of dialogue is pulled right out of the book— the
alterations are all a matter of subtraction rather than addition— trust
us, the film is a hell of a lot funnier, because of the sort of delivery
the actors smoothly bring to the dialogue. Bardem’s weird pronunciation
and aggressive way with words, or Jones’ folksy resignation bring the
occasional laugh line, making for the sort of blackened humor so often
associated with the Coens. It’s worth noting that here, it’s almost
always a case of nervous laughter. As Jones’ sheriff says to his deputy,
who inadvertently laughs out loud after told about a senior citizen
murder ring, sometimes you just got to laugh at this stuff, as it’s all
you can do. This gritty game of cat and mouse will take you to the edge
of your seat and well beyond. A collection of behind-the-scenes bonus
features including a look at the Coen Brothers filmmaking process which
makes the No Country for Old Men DVD and Blu-ray Disc an experience you
don’t want to miss. UB
