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NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
No Country For Old Men
In a remote part of the American mid-west, a man stumbles upon several dead bodies and $2 million in cash. He takes the money and runs. score

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Cast
Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Kelly McDonald

Director
Joel & Ethan Coen

Screenwriter
Joel & Ethan Coen

Country
USA

Rating / Running Time
MA / 122 minutes

Australian Release
December 2007

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(c) moviereview 2006-2007
ABN 72 775 390 361
“You can’t stop what’s coming,” says Ellis. Fans of Cormac McCarthy would have been encouraged when the Coen brothers (The Man Who Wasn’t There) signed on to develop his 2005 novel. They’ll be overjoyed by the resounding success of the film, one that wowed Cannes and wooed the New York Film Critics Circle. One with a contemporary head and an ancient heart. For if No Country for Old Men is about anything, it’s about the zeal with which society tears itself apart, informed by a meditation on fatalism and the ties of blood and duty. All of which could make for stultifying two hours in the cinema if it wasn’t for the Coens innate ability to entertain while filling our heads with ideas big and small.

Shaped like a vigilante thriller, No Country for Old Men opens in the wilds of America’s west. Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) is hunting antelope when he stumbles upon a drug bust gone bad: several dead bodies, a trailer full of heroin and a bag full of cash. He takes the money, hides his wife and sets about outwitting those who’ll come after him. They hire a psychopathic gunman (Javier Bardem) to recoup their losses. Then they hire another (Woody Harrelson) to stop his rampage, and from stealing the cash for himself. In the middle of the storm is local law Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) whose modest hope is to save Moss.

Those of a squeamish disposition will be challenged by the ensuing bloodbath. The Coens do not tread lightly as much of what should stay inside a man, falls out. It is as toe-curling as it is legitimate, carnage presented with a graphic intensity that still has the power to shock.

Helping manage the unpleasant material is a crackling script that recalls the wit of Fargo, a thin line of deadpan that pins escalating tension to credibility. Further comparisons arise; Jones’ stoic sensibility recalls a weathered Marge Gunderson at the far end of her career. Yet where Marge got her man, No Country for Old Men is an altogether different chipper of wood.  Worn flat by a changing world, Bell observes “that any time you quit hearin ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’, the end is pretty much in sight”. It is one of several scenes that slice enormous themes into digestible concepts and pulls you from one extraordinary moment to another. Like Fargo, No Country for Old Men is a thrilling powerhouse of ideas, philosophy and coal black humour. For the Coen’s to have achieved this once was remarkable. To have done it twice is astonishing.

// COLIN FRASER