No Country for Old Men (Coen Bros, USA)
I usually don’t see films I know will be opening widely in Columbus, but I couldn’t resist seeing this one, with the rave reviews it has been receiving. I’m not sure I have much to add to the accolades the film has already garnered, but Javier Bardem is quite possibly the best heavy in a film in the past ten years and brings to mind Jack Palance in Shane. The story? A man stumbles on a drug deal gone bad, finds a suitcase stuffed with cash, and spends the rest of the film in a battle of wits with the killing machine on his trail. I would be shocked if Bardem isn’t one of the nominees for best supporting actor at next year’s Oscars. Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson also appear, and it’s based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy (with a Coen bros. twist). (Celebrity sighting: Michael Moore was escorted/inserted in line right in front of me as the line for the screening was about as long as they get. He was very nice and almost apologetic for the VIP treatment and chatted with all around him.)
Source: WexBlog
No Country For Old Men (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen): I actually liked Intolerable Cruelty and thought The Ladykillers had its redeeming qualities, but neither film felt completely on-point. Taking a few years off seems to have done the Coen brothers a world of good. Here, the familiar Coen signifiers are well-deployed, from the seedy motels to the barren landscapes to the slow dollies in to people not quite able to sleep. But No Country For Old Men is also graver than any other Coen brothers movie, despite their trademark deadpan humor and flavorful dialogue (a lot of which is lifted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel). The theme of unstoppable evil and the lengths we’ll go to avoid confronting it seems to have provoked a steely purpose from our Coens. No Country is quiet for long stretches, and the story perversely withholds some major characters (and the stars who play them) until they’re absolutely needed; but nothing about the movie is in the least saggy or superfluous. It’s a fine-tuned anxiety-delivery device, with a menacing jack-in-the box lurking inside.(A)
Source: A.V. Club