I like villains. I always have.
Now, I'm not talking about real-life villains like Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore, and the liberal media.
No I'm talking about VILLAINS with a capital V! Skeletor and Megatron* were always infinitely more interesting to me than He-Man
and Optimus Prime. I mean, a semi is pretty sweet**, but transforming into a Walther P38 Fusion Cannon that can level entire city blocks is infinitely cooler. I guess I enjoy the certain level of glee that villains take in their work. Courage is good, but Hannibal Lecter taking pride in eating Ray Liotta's brain will always warm my cockles.
And in No Country For Old Men, we have a new villain for the ages in Anton Chigurh.
No Country For Old Men, the latest Coen brothers flick, takes place in Texas in the early 80s, and begins with an anti-hero, Llewelyn
(Josh Brolin sporting an super macho mustache) stumbling upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone incredibly wrong. He finds a crapload of money, and decides it's a good idea to keep it. As what usually happens with someone finding craploads of money, the people who lost it are very interested in getting it back. Unfortunately for Llewelyn, the person hired to look for the money is a murderous psychopath named Anton Chigurh, played to the hilt with a menacing charisma by Javier Bardem.
And Anton is one bad dude. He travels across the country side killing everything in sight, be it animal or human. And he kills with
no regard. If you are in his way, you're pretty much dead, friend-o. In addition to your standard firearms, Anton also carries around a pressurized cattle gun, which he uses to kill people and open doors with equal aplomb.
As should be noted, the Coen brothers are totally back on their game with this movie.
After the misfires of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, they come back blazing with this one. Every frame of the film is seeping with tension, and in a stroke of genius, most of the film goes unscored***.
The dialogue is typical Coen brothers brilliance.
They give the characters, especially Tommy Lee Jones, line after line of witty, dry, Texas vernacular that adds a level of dark humor to the whole proceedings. When asked how dangerous Anton is, Woody Harrelson states, "You mean compared to the bubonic plague?"
The darkest, tensest, funniest, most harrowing, most violent, thoughtful film you, me, or anyone else you know will see this year,
No Country For Old Men will deservedly win the Oscar for Best Picture this year. Javeir Bardem will be nominated for best supporting actor. The Coen Brothers will be nominated for best Director, and the writing will be nominated for best adapted screenplay. I will be
surprised, and quite disappointed if it doesn't win in all categories. Of course, that's like saying I actually give a shit about the
Oscars, which may get my job as film reviewer on a hipster website revoked. WAIT! I like the Oscars ironically, like Unicorn T-shirts
and William Shatner. Don't hold it against me, folks.
*Although it's somewhat disturbing to notice that all the cartoon
villains from my youth had the vocal qualities of evil drag queens.
**I have one now, but that's because I'm thinking about some girl I
used to go out with.
***This means no music. But it also could be a reference to my
current sex life.
God loves a cheerful giver.
i'm VERY excited to see this movie. i was going to see it this weekend, but the timing didn't work out. it is getting a 95 on metacritic...which is very convincing.
i did see this instead:
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/beforethedevilknowsyou'redead
i think you would dig it. it was pretty amazing. dark.
yeah - you're the second person who's mentioned they couldn't see No Country and instead saw Before the Devil. I'm definitely going to see that soon. all hail Sidney Lumet.
Finally, some good movies have come a-callin' ...
For a moment there, I thought I was going to have to produce a movie of my own and hire Lord Jason to direct.
Thank God that didn't need to happen!
yeah - you don't want me directing anything. You know what they say, "Those that can't do, critique!" or something like that.
Freaking unbelievably good movie. The idea of putting Cormac McCarthy's laconic/poetic style on the screen seemed impossible, insulting, bizarre. How would anyone capture the lyricism, the pace, the feeling of desolation and the quite building sense of the impending apocalypse that infuses almost all of his writing? The Coen Brothers succeeded in a way I scarcely thought possible. This is painful, beautiful, mysterious, odd, and, very occasionally, laugh-out-loud funny filmmaking.
I would say that if you're going in thinking, "oh, a Coen Brothers film, I loved the Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona," this film will come as a shock - much as if you saw "Saving Private Ryan" and then saw "The Thin Red Line." Or, if you were hoping to get a little pussy and ended up getting gored to death in a lion’s den.
The other thing that I found remarkable was the use of violence and stomach-churning gore. It's like a lesson to all those "Saw" and "Hostel," and "Hills Have Eyes"-remake shit-fests. I think the violence in this film is used very deliberately, very carefully, almost scientifically. The violence on screen is fundamentally different than in those other films for a simple reason - in those other films, the violence and gore is the point of the film – it’s the payoff; the money shot. It's violence as pornography. In this film, it's simply one of many tools the Coen Brothers use to ratchet up the feeling of utter dread - pure, inevitable - and utterly the fault of the protagonist’s good heart. Near-tragedy, but without any societal uplift.
A classic.
i saw this yesterday and seriously, it was so good, i almost died.