DVD Release Date: March 11, 2008
Theatrical Release Date: November 9, 2007 (limited)
Rating: R (for strong graphic violence and some language)
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 122 min.
Director: Joel Coen
Actors: Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Tess Harper
“I feel overmatched,” Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) confides in a friend as he prepares to confront a psychopathic killer in No Country for Old Men. “I always figured God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn’t. I don’t blame Him. If I was Him, I’d have the same opinion about me that He does.”
No Country for Old Men, based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy and adapted for the screen by Joel and Ethan Coen, is a brooding, powerful film that depicts evil as an unstoppable force. Technically superb in front of and behind the camera, the film’s greatest asset—or liability, depending on how you interpret it—is the struggle at the heart of this disturbing story for answers to profound questions: How can well-meaning people confront unstoppable evil? Is there any hope to do so apart from God?
Josh Brolin stars as Llewelyn Moss, a hunter who stumbles upon a group of dead men, a truck filled with drugs and a suitcase filled with money. He chooses to take the money, marking him as a wanted man by cold-hearted killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), and two men who hope to find Moss before Chigurh does: Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones) and a slick businessman (Woody Harrelson) who fear Moss is in way over his head.
Moss knows he’s being pursued, so he flees town, ostensibly protecting his wife (Kelly Macdonald) from those willing to do anything to retrieve it. Bell chases after Moss, hoping that Chigurh’s trail of destruction won’t meet up with Moss before Bell can.
The story is simple, as are the motivations of many of the characters: Moss makes an impulsive decision with dire consequences and Chigurh relentlessly pursues him. But it’s Bell who is the conscience of the film—an “old man” who wonders how violence has become so pervasive and extreme by the late 20th century (the story is set in Texas in 1980). He can’t come up with much of a response to his friend Ellis, who tells him, “This country is hard on people. Hard and crazy. Got the devil in it, yet folks never seem to hold it to account.”
“Most don’t,” Bell replies. He’s tried, but he feels defeated.
“You can’t stop what’s comin’, Ellis says, in an effort to ease Bell’s burden. “Ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.”
