Bardem got the statue, but it was Tommy Lee Jones who had me admiring his every move and phrase.
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The Coen brothers are batting .500--not for their career, certainly, but for this year's Academy Awards. "No Country for Old Men" won four Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay) but lost for cinematography, editing, sound, and sound editing. And you know what? I think that cinematographer Roger Deakins probably should have won as well. His exterior shots of the rugged West are nothing short of poetic, while his camera work in tight spaces required a contortionist's body, and his handling of the violence was so matter-of-fact that it was made all the more chilling. No shaky camera stuff, no slo-mo, no skip-frame, no tricks--just a cinematographer's feel for how to frame shots to get the right effect, how to use angles to evoke an emotional point of view, and how to let the camera run just long enough to tell the story and get the hell out of there.
On one of the bonus features, the Coens talk about how important the cinematography was--particularly of the land--to the feel of the film, which was adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel. All that beauty, all that rugged terrain, and all that expansiveness really drive home the novel's themes. In effect, McCarthy, best known for his Border trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain), relocates his lament of the changing West to the 1980s.
Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, in one of his best performances--and no nomination!) is an aging West Texas lawman who launches into an ubi sunt (Where are?) monologue in the opening voiceover. Where are the days when a lawman could patrol this wide expanse without even carrying a gun? Where are the days when you could keep up with the criminals? This border drug trade has really upped the ante for old-timers like Bell, and he frankly wonders whether he's up to the task of tangling with men who would kill at such a brutal level--not just once, but as a matter of course. People like this just aren't human.
McCarthy's novel and the Coen's screenplay features three main characters in what amounts to a modern-day Western. It all starts when a local stumbles upon the carnage of a drug deal gone bad while he's out hunting antelope. Among the bodies and bullet-riddled cars is a pile of heroin and a suitcase full of money--lots of money. Too much, in fact, for a normally law-abiding guy like Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) to pass up. So he grabs the cash, full knowing that the people who did this would find out who had the money, track him down, and kill him. But of course he has a plan.
It doesn't take long before Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, in his award-winning performance) is on Moss's tail. Chigurh is a psychopathic killer hired by the drug kingpin to get that money and the person responsible. And he'll go down in cinematic history as one of the most chilling killers, thanks in part to that oxygen tank he carries that's hooked up to a bolt gun. On their tail is Sheriff Bell and his deputy (Garret Dillahunt). But so is another hired gun (Woody Harrelson) who's engaged by a drug kingpin to catch up to the out-of-control Chigurh, who moves through the landscape like an ornery sidewinder, striking casually at anything in his path. At times, Chigurh seems totally amoral, but then there's the coin that he asks some of the people to call. "Heads or tails?" he asks. "What do I win?" a man responds. "Everything," comes the answer. The flip determines whether Chigurh kills or not.
Touches like that make "No Country for Old Men" a rich and engaging crime thriller, if you can stand the blood and violence. The way that relationships are developed also adds texture, whether it's a conversation between Bell and Wendell that shows how the younger man is a little more up-to-speed in some areas (while the wily old guy one-ups him on the old ways), or surprisingly understated scenes of tenderness between Bell and his wife (Tess Harper) and Moss and the wife he sends away, trying to protect Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) from the mess he's gotten them into. Curiously, McCarthy and the Coen brothers are able to move the plot forward nicely by keeping the principles from intersecting, and they use two unpredictable killers and a sense of randomness to further drive the tension. Like the needle in the heart in "Pulp Fiction," the episodes that will stick in filmgoers' memories years from now are the chilling encounters between Chigurh and his victims/would-be victims. That, and Moss's encounter with the dog from hell.
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