No Country for Old Men

Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly MacDonald

Written by: Ethan and Joel Coen

Directed by: Ethan and Joel Coen

Distributor: Paramount Vantage

Rated: R

The Coen Brothers have never shied from stylish violence, so it’s no small proclamation that No Country for Old Men is their bleakest film yet, permeated and overwhelmed by cold, senseless bloodshed. At times their fascination with how awesome violence looks on screen borders on simplistic, as does their relentless cynicism – epitomized by their previous film, The Ladykillers – which is Ealing Studios-meets-point-blank-gunshots-to-the-face hollowness.


But their treatment of violence matures considerably with No Country for Old Men, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s spare 2003 novel in which Llewellyn Moss, a gru ff, silent neo-noir type (the Coens’ favorite protagonist), finds $2 million in drug money next to some bullet-riddled corpses in Texas’ dusty expanse. Foolishly, he decides to keep it and blood-soaked chaos ensues, perpetrated mostly by psychopathic hit man Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem as death personified, all emotionless growl and self-amusing cruelty.


This is familiar territory, of course, for the Coens. Fargo comes to mind, with its dark humor, high body count, atmosphere of escalating dread and local color. But there is something about the gloom in No Country for Old Men, an interest in how violence twists us, that’s more perceptive. It may be watered-down fatalism, but the vicious insanity following Moss’s decision to keep the $2 million is treated not as the consequence of active choices but the by-product of a world already gone crazy. Violence seems inevitable with opening shots of sun and land clashing: the Western landscape is to become a battleground of epic proportions. Several characters try desperately to convince Chigurh that his insanity is not an unchangeable trait, that it’s not fated – claims which he instantly, brutally refutes.


Amidst the spiraling chaos, most of the characters realize they can no longer comprehend or withstand a world consumed by violence. The theme isn’t quite that the whole world is going to shit, but it’s close. And while this might seem self-consciously nihilistic (a fair criticism of the Coens at times), the film is so controlled, its aesthetic so astutely aligned to what it’s trying to say, that in the end it’s powerful and sobering instead of forced or simplistic. To be sure, this bloodstained world is parallel to our own, in which individual human beings are sometimes incapable of controlling the violence that surrounds them. Bleak, to be sure — but in some ways more compassionate than anything the Coens have ever done. No Country for Old Men depicts a portentous tide of senseless cruelty, but it empathizes with characters attempting to endure the madness — a sentiment sincere, prescient and ultimately affecting. VS