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Entry tags:
Films X
X: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men (2007)
I've long been a fan of the Coen brothers and, whilst I can see the argument that their parodic streak undercuts empathy with their characters, I think we do still care. Of late, however, I've not been so sure. I disliked Intolerable Clooney, which wasn't their own script, and didn't go near The Ladykillers with a ten-foot proverbial. So now we have their version of a neo-western, an adaptation of a Cormac MCarthy novel I haven't read.
We have Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbling across a crime scene in the desert of a drugs sale gone bad, we have Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) tracking down the money from the sale that Moss has pocketed and we have sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) trying to solve the crime and protecting Moss and his family. We eventually have Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), trying to track down Chigurh.
None of this breaks much new ground - we have elements of Blood Simple in setting and set-up, Bell is a male version of Marge from Fargo, the laconic narration is from The Big Lebowski, and Chigurgh is the sort of unstoppable force as we saw in Raising Arizona, even down to the shooting of animals as he drives past them. There are dogs chasing characters and combs and silly haircuts. I think it's more serious than most of their other films - there are laughs but these are few and far between. It's also pretty dark.
There's a late plot point that I think the Coens shy away from showing us - to the extent that I assumed that we were being misled about what had happened. But no, there was no consolation. You get in the way of the lava flow, you're going to get burnt.
Deakins's photography is sharp as ever, and the Coens do their own editing, but Carter Burwell's music is more subdued. Note the actors have been nominated for Best Supporting Actors; Bardem and Brolin probably have the same screen time, whereas Jones is in it slightly less but picks up the pieces. Bardem looks as if he belongs in a 1970s thriller - but then the film is set in 1980. This is what Tarantino's film should have been.
Go see.
Totals: 10 [Cinema: 4; DVD: 6; TV: 0]
I've long been a fan of the Coen brothers and, whilst I can see the argument that their parodic streak undercuts empathy with their characters, I think we do still care. Of late, however, I've not been so sure. I disliked Intolerable Clooney, which wasn't their own script, and didn't go near The Ladykillers with a ten-foot proverbial. So now we have their version of a neo-western, an adaptation of a Cormac MCarthy novel I haven't read.
We have Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbling across a crime scene in the desert of a drugs sale gone bad, we have Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) tracking down the money from the sale that Moss has pocketed and we have sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) trying to solve the crime and protecting Moss and his family. We eventually have Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), trying to track down Chigurh.
None of this breaks much new ground - we have elements of Blood Simple in setting and set-up, Bell is a male version of Marge from Fargo, the laconic narration is from The Big Lebowski, and Chigurgh is the sort of unstoppable force as we saw in Raising Arizona, even down to the shooting of animals as he drives past them. There are dogs chasing characters and combs and silly haircuts. I think it's more serious than most of their other films - there are laughs but these are few and far between. It's also pretty dark.
There's a late plot point that I think the Coens shy away from showing us - to the extent that I assumed that we were being misled about what had happened. But no, there was no consolation. You get in the way of the lava flow, you're going to get burnt.
Deakins's photography is sharp as ever, and the Coens do their own editing, but Carter Burwell's music is more subdued. Note the actors have been nominated for Best Supporting Actors; Bardem and Brolin probably have the same screen time, whereas Jones is in it slightly less but picks up the pieces. Bardem looks as if he belongs in a 1970s thriller - but then the film is set in 1980. This is what Tarantino's film should have been.
Go see.
Totals: 10 [Cinema: 4; DVD: 6; TV: 0]