The Men Can’t Help It

The Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, is perhaps one of the best films I’ve seen this year – a deserved statement that, mind you, I just loathe making this time of year, but one about which I feel quite confident.

For one, it’s a western. That alone, if you read this blog, should clue you in as to why I was so surprised to have enjoyed it as much as I did.

Set in West Texas, No Country for Old Men follows a man (Josh Brolin) on the run with a suitcase full of $2 million. Although he’s being pursued by a number of individuals, including a band of Mexican drug runners, and a psychopathic assassin (Javier Bardem), he will stop at nothing to keep his found fortune.

I’ll keep this simple: The film is a thrilling piece – and you must, must, must see it.

The writing is so precise it doesn’t matter that not much is said but that so much is conveyed and implied; it’s just that grabbing.

Brolin is terrific as our anti-hero, Llewelyn Moss, but Bardem, who spends a great deal of the film carrying a tank of compressed air, killing people with a cattle stun gun, proves to be the formidable foe that this No Country for Old Men deserved to be so great.

Each knows and does what he wants, and although there’s a hint of pause to their actions, both leave them be (for different reasons) because they understand trying to change them is futile.

It’s mesmerizing to witness men with such self-understanding. You’ve got to meet them.

My Rating ****

Photo: Miramax Films.