DVD review: No Country For Old Men (From Surrey Comet)

DVD review: No Country For Old Men

7:52am Tuesday 14th October 2008

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Full score: 3.5 stars This is a film I really wanted to see. It was one of three DVD’s my son bought me for my birthday in August and I was just waiting for the right moment to watch it.

It had to be with no interruptions viewed on the 42in screen with the lights out and a bottle of Ravenswood, a nice Californian Red Zinfandel.

No Country for Old Men was the big hit of 2007 directed by the Coen brothers who also adapted the screenplay from the novel by Cormac McCarthy.

It won the Oscar for best picture and another for best performance in a supporting role by Javier Barden (Plus a couple more Oscars that I won’t bore you with).

Set in 1980 and starts with out protagonist a modern day cowboy Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) hunting antelope in the West Texas desert, who stumbles across the scene of what has all the features of a drugs deal gone terribly wrong.

Four ‘pick-up’ trucks looking like covered wagons are eerily stationary with bloated bodies and a decaying pit bull lying dead on the desert sand, which can only be the result of a Mexican stand-off. Llewelyn doesn’t seem fazed by this discovery and it’s then that we realise that he has seen a lot of action and bodies in his time and we find out later that he is a decorated Vietnam veteran.

When he looks in one of the vehicles he discovers unexpected Mexican in the driver’s seat badly wounded and very close to death, asking for water.

Llewelyn tells him he ‘ain’t got no water’ He later comes across a case containing $2 million and decides that this is his time and takes the money back to his wife in their trailer home.

At this point you start to wonder if you are going to like this character who seems like red neck trailer trash that had no sympathy for a dying man begging for a drink. But it’s his bout of conscience in the middle of the night that makes him drag himself out of bed and fill a gallon container with water and drive back out to the crime scene only to find that he is too late to save him.

This good deed turned out to be a BIG Mistake... Huge!

Some other bad guys turn up and discover his pick up and now they have his details from the licence plate, so his only option is to run.

The Mob boss in charge sends a hit man to bring the money back and kill the person who had the balls to take it. The hit man Anton Chigurh is brilliantly played by Javier Bardem who is totally brutal and without any morals and believes life and death is decided on a flip of a coin.

He’s unstoppable, a bit like the Terminator (Sorry Coens but it’s true) he just keeps coming!

Plus he does a Do-it-yourself repair job on his injured body in a motel bathroom. He also has an unusual weapon that he drags around with him. A pressurized gas cylinder which acts as a portable cattle gun that fires a bolt into your head and retracts leaving no trace.

The other main character in this movie is the Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who is also on the trail of our hero and the hit man which is actually made easier by the trail of devastation left by Anton.

Tommy Lee Jones is reliable as ever and is very much at home in his native West Texas but that is a bit of a problem as his Texan drawl makes you turn your head sideways so your ear is in line with the TV and for some reason this action also makes you squint as well (funny that!). The three of them are very rarely seen together on the screen at the same time.

Look out for a cameo turn from Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells another Nam vet who is sent by the mob to put a stop to Anton, as he is clearly out of control.

Now here’s the thing... Up to three quarters of the way through the film me and my son Andrew are really on the edge of our seat and rooting for Llewelyn who at one point seems to have turned the tables on Anton in a street shoot out after escaping from a hotel window.

I’m not going to spoil anything but suddenly the Coen brothers go in a completely different direction.

I must admit we both felt cheated. Before writing this review I looked at a few other reviews by known professional critics and 95 per cent of them rave about the brilliant Coens and are sycophantic to the point of making you want to vomit.

Sorry… did I miss something? Most of the reviews seem like a case of The Emperors New Clothes it takes just one person to point out that, you are allowed to criticise the Coens without your piers thinking you’re stupid.

I actually think this is a good film but let’s not get carried away and start dishing out awards. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I watched NCFOM and the Coen brothers do a good line in suspense. Rent it out and I would be interested to know what you think.

It made me think of similar films that didn’t get this kind of praise but were just as good. If you get a chance check out: Charley Varrick starring Walter Matthau (1973) The Getaway starring Steve McQueen (1972) Flashpoint starring Kris Kristofferson (1984) They all follow the same formula. The hero comes into possession of a large amount of money (preferably Mob money), this has to take place in Texas, get pursued by an unstoppable robotic like hit man and end up in a showdown in Mexico.

By the way. Just in case you are interested the other 2 DVD’s my son bought me are Eastern Promises (four stars) and a guilty pleasure Transformers (three stars) would have given it 4 but he film went on too long.

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