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Everybody has been calling No Country for Old Men a return to form for the Coen brothers after the less-than-accliamed duet of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Those maligned efforts were far from terrible, however; they were just rather broad comedies, and quite far removed from the brothers' idiosyncratic comfort zone. Although the directing siblings would probably define all of their films as comedies, it is the darker entries that have received most adoration, such as Fargo and Miller's Crossing (The Big Lebowski, too, is more of a Raymond Chandler homage than a stoner comedy, despite working as both). No Country for Old Men is one of their most serious outings yet, recalling the grimness of their debut Blood Simple but with twenty years of experience well evident, and has seen their names bandied about as Academy Award frontrunners.
Dialogue, which is always a Coen hallmark, is very sparse in No Country. Nothing uneccessary is spoken for long stretches. It is the desolate yet alluring Texas landscape that does much of the talking here, making the film feel something like a Western set in 1980. Fundamentally, the film is about a chase: Josh Brolin's Lleywelyn Moss finds a briefcase full of cash after encountering a bunch of bullet-riddled corpses, and Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh – that's Chigurh, not sugar – is the hitman sent to retrieve it. Chigurh is a character that will not be forgotten quickly; his weapons of choice are a pressurised oxygen canister and a silenced pump-action shotgun, and his hairstyle looks like some sort of dead animal. He's an unstoppable, emotionless killing machine who decides fates based on coin tosses. The chase feels like The Terminator, with the same relentlessness and bucketfuls of knuckle-gnawing tension. Like Alfred Hitchcock, the Coens use silence to enhance the suspense and it leads to some brilliant edge-of-seat moments. Bardem's chilling, occasionally comically callous performance leaves an indelible impression.
Brolin, as well, is superb in a less showy role. The Californian native has deservedly risen to prominence this year with parts in this, Planet Terror and American Gangster, but it feels like he's been around for ages. It's purely Bardem's attention-grabbing role that has led to Brolin being somewhat overlooked here. Tommy Lee Jones is the only one who seems to be on autopilot, playing the same sheriff character he has many times before and speaking in such a strong Texas drawl that he becomes difficult to understand during his longer monologues. It must be a deliberate ploy by the Coens, though, as they always carefully construct their films with absolute precision. In retrospect Jones' character becomes perhaps the most important in the film, but his moments on screen are the least interesting and his role in the central thriller narrative is tangential at best.
The film only begins to lose its way in the final stages. The narrative takes a jarringly unexpected direction that has been applauded by many but can come across as quite unsatisfying. With foreknowledge of the ending a second viewing may offer a different experience. On first viewing, though, No Country for Old Men feels like a film that builds up a tremendous head of steam for the first two thirds, then runs out of breath and staggers over the finish line. The strength of those first two acts means that it still comes highly recommended.
The summary
A brilliant, gripping and extraordinary cat-and-mouse thriller – for 90-odd minutes. Then No Country for Old Men takes a daring and not entirely satisfying direction which dampens the overall experience. Repeat viewings may allow for reassessment.
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