No Country for Old Men

I’m not going to waste any time at all getting to the point on this one. This was without a doubt the best movie I have seen this year. This is the kind of movie that doesn’t end when the credits roll. I took it home with me and I couldn’t shake it for a long while. The story is straightforward enough. Llewelyn Moss is out hunting in the Texas desert and stumbles across the remains of a shootout: several dead bodies, dead trucks, a truck bed full of heroin, and two million dollars. Everyone is dead, so he takes the money. You could say that “still waters run deep” for each of the main male characters of this film. Moss is played by Josh Brolin as a man of few words, determined to keep what he decides is rightfully his. Javier Bardem is Anton Chigurh, the ruthless killer sent to recover the money, who enjoys deciding the fate of victims on the flip of a coin. Then we have Tommy Lee Jones as the town sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, investigating the trail of deaths left by Chigurh and trying to find Moss in the meantime. I love what the Coens do with the film. Immediately you get the parallels between Moss and Chigurh, the elements of good and evil taken and presented out of focus. Bell is just the guy trying to keep up, testing himself to see if he has still got it. He certainly isn’t given anyone to whom he can pass it along. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole film, until they put the brakes on in ways you will never see coming. And the fact that Kelly McDonald, playing Moss’s wife Carla Jean, turns out to be one of the most interesting characters was a complete surprise. Of all the lines spoken in the film, I think Carla Jean’s, in her last scene, were the most compelling. I’m not equipped to explain this movie right now. I have to see it again. You have to see it immediately. And in the meantime, something to consider: what is the most you have ever lost in a coin toss?