No Country for Old Men [Blu-ray] dvd movie.|
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List Price: $34.99 Our Price: $23.95 You Save: $11.04 Features • Color • NTSC • Widescreen In Theaters : 21 November, 2007 DVD Release : 11 March, 2008 |
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No Country for Old Men [Blu-ray] description The Coen brothers make their finest thriller since Fargo with a restrained adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel. Not that there aren't moments of intense violence, but No Country for Old Men is their quietest, most existential film yet. In this modern-day Western, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a Vietnam vet who could use a break. One morning while hunting antelope, he spies several trucks surrounded by dead bodies (both human and canine). In examining the site, he finds a case filled with $2 million. Moss takes it with him, tells his wife (Kelly Macdonald) he's going away for awhile, and hits the road until he can determine his next move. On the way from El Paso to Mexico, he discovers he's being followed by ex-special ops agent Chigurh (an eerily calm Javier Bardem). Chigurh's weapon of choice is a cattle gun, and he uses it on everyone who gets in his way--or loses a coin toss (as far as he's concerned, bad luck is grounds for death). Just as Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a World War II vet, is on Moss's trail, Chigurh's former colleague, Wells (Woody Harrelson), is on his. For most of the movie, Moss remains one step ahead of his nemesis. Both men are clever and resourceful--except Moss has a conscious, Chigurh does not (he is, as McCarthy puts it, "a prophet of destruction"). At times, the film plays like an old horror movie, with Chigurh as its lumbering Frankenstein monster. Like the taciturn terminator, No Country for Old Men doesn't move quickly, but the tension never dissipates. This minimalist masterwork represents Joel and Ethan Coen and their entire cast, particularly Brolin and Jones, at the peak of their powers. --Kathleen C. Fennessy |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | No Oscars for this Man |
| I often find American movies to be triumphs of style over substance. Regardless, our nation produces some of the finest films I've ever seen. *No Country for Old Men* works to weave that finery from cinematography to literary themes. That it ultimately unspools disappoints me. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, *No Country* is another quirky Coen crime caper, and still deserves to be seen for those reasons alone.
Lone Llewelyn Moss steals drug dollars out in the desert, stoking the wrath of American and Mexican gangs. Meanwhile, rogue assassin Anton Chigurh decides he wants the cash for himself--and no witnesses to trace it... As such, the acting and characterizations are good. Josh Brolin does not move, stand, or talk like the war veteran Moss is supposed to be, yet he impressed me as a schmuck trying to outsmart the system. Kelly MacDonald exudes a likeable personality, without a trace of thick Scottish accent in her West Texas character. Then there's Tommy Lee Jones who, like Morgan Freeman, can count on to be the wise and world-weary grandfather. Finally, the pleasant surprise is, of course, Javier Bardem as the epitome of the enigmatic psycho-killer. I was also amused by all the Schwarzenegger references. Several scenes are cribbed right out of *Predator* and *Commando*, and I am not the first to notice that Chigurh behaves like the Terminator, while Moss channels Kyle Reese right down to his shotgun. But the interesting thing about No Country is not the sweeping horizons, the tense action, or the literary themes. I'm struck by all the hallmarks of a bad movie. The film methodically follows Moss as he steals a submachine gun, steals extra ammo, and lugs the weapon around for five minutes before stashing it under his trailer with the stolen cash. The whole sequence shouts "THIS PROP IS SIGNIFICANT!" Only, when Moss has to skip town and acquire a gun, the weapon never reappears. In storytelling you don't have a prop unless it has purpose, and the same goes for locations. About two-thirds into the film, it meanders. Moss goes through a bloody struggle to cross the border, only to convalesce in a hospital and run over to El Paso. Chigurh too, wanders through redundant locations; I already know he's on the prowl, so don't waste my time. Only their chase becomes more convoluted as it parades pointless characters. Such as Carson Wells, a bounty hunter who spells out the mystique of the villain. However, the audience already experiences the mystique of the Pneumatic Reaper. And the Deep Thoughts he offers to Wells really applies to Moss and Bell--so Chigurh should have been talking to these central characters instead of wasting breath on a cute cameo. Same goes for cameos by Stephen Root,Beth Grant, and Barry Corbin. Numerous hicks, gangsters, and bystanders also bog down the film. Most of these flash-in-the-pan characters are killed by the villain, but I got that point in his introduction sequence--repeating stylish murder adds bulk to the film without adding substance. This leads me to another hallmark of bad movies, the mishandling of central characters. Sheriff Bell has a significant amount of screen time, but his actual presence amounts to a Greek Chorus; between escapades by other characters, he moseys onscreen to drawl about The Evil That Men Do in Our Modern Times, and moseys back off in time for the youngsters to trade buckshot. Bell is the same cynical retiree as Detective Sommerset in the movie *Se7en*, but unlike the latter, Bell doesn't interact with the story so much as flap-jaw homilies with minor participants. Moss's wife, on the other hand, has a major role to play in the story. So it's a shame she's hardly seen, let alone developed. The film pretty much tucks her in the background until the film's climax. She trots out to a coda that might have meant something if she was involved in the story. But she isn't, and that leads me to the greatest sin of No Country--the disconnect between plot and theme. Chigurh himself is a well-realized metaphor as the Pneumatic Reaper of Fateful Coins. Unfortunately, he tosses with so many incidental characters that he never gets around to either of the central protagonists, Moss or Bell. This leaves his theme flapping loose like the tarp on the county morgue truck. Speaking of county, an obvious theme rides with Sheriff Bell and the Cartels. As our societies become wealthy and complex, our fates become more violent and unpredictable. Except Bell takes a comfortable back porch to the plot, while the Mexicans might as well kick back in Red Shirts, they are such generic ethnic fodder. The story mainly follows the cat-and-mouse games of Moss and Chigurh. But 3/4 of the way through, it unceremoniously dumps the whole show in favor of Bell's unearned existential angst. Which surely is no reason to pass it over, I reckon. In a lot of ways, *No Country* is a rural version of *Se7en*, in which a jaded old lawman can only watch as an iconic evil hunts a naA ve but virile couple. But *Se7en* was all atmosphere and no useful point. *No Country* makes both without resorting to music video gimmicks, and while it shares the same trendy nihilism with *Se7en*, I didn't find it nearly as oppressive. As Javier Bardem says, "That's the best I can do for you." With *No Country for Old Men*, I call it a thriller that flies apart at the fundamental seams of character, plot, and theme. But somehow it still stands to win everything. DVD Notes: Your standard issue release, with a few brief featurettes, no audio or video options, and a crisp transfer. I found some dialogue difficult to hear, while my friend found the featurettes to be excessively bright. Windows Media Player ran the main feature fine, but balked in some of the menus. |
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