While a surprisingly large number of movies are based on novels, rarely does a film's effect on its audience match the novel's effect on its readers. Luckily, "No Country for Old Men" succeeds in this arena. Ethan and Joel Coen - "Fargo" (1996), "The Big Lebowski" (1998) - have joined Billy Bob Thornton, who directed "All the Pretty Horses" (2000), in the category of successful Cormac McCarthy adaptors. While viewers should have a bit of a stomach for realistic shots of carnage, "No Country for Old Men" is well worth the price of admission, and will leave audience members mulling over the information for days.
In the true fashion of the Coen brothers' movies, the plot of the film is initially confusing, but it is tied together quite well as the story plays out - coming to a thrilling philosophical climax. The story opens to Llewelyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin), a blue-collar metal-welder from West Texas, who is out hunting when he stumbles upon a drug deal gone horribly wrong. Not far off from the collection of bullet riddled pick-up trucks and bodies at the scene, Llewelyn uses his hunting prowess to spot the perpetrator of the killings lying dead under a tree, with a briefcase full of money on his lap.
The briefcase and the allure of its contents are naturally too much for a poor welder to resist, setting off a strange and thrilling chain of catastrophic violence. A wild chase through the bleak expanse of West Texas ensues, complete with drug cartels, murder, a psychopathic mercenary named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and a whole lot of shooting. It all goes down right under the nose of the law, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a jaded but shrewd man who just wants to get Moss out of trouble.
As Moss tries to escape his pursuers, he ignores several opportunities to get out of his predicament, in the form of yet another mercenary Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), Sheriff Bell and Chigurh. The result is that Moss must pay for his mistakes, putting the people he loves in harm's way. The film peels the wrapper off the plight of lower class America and shows that no matter what, choices always come with consequences. As Chigurh so philosophically states, "We all get what's comin' to us."
Beyond the complex plot, this movie shines because of the quality acting. While viewers rarely see any of the stars together in one shot, each of the three primary roles - Llewellyn, Chigurh and Sheriff Bell - feels intertwined, with each man's fate somewhere in the mix. Brolin, Bardem and Jones all fit together in the Coen brothers' puzzle of laissez-faire directing and actor initiative.
One of the most surprising aspects of this movie is the lack of music. There is no soundtrack for the film, so the ambient noise becomes critical. Surprisingly, the lack of music certainly doesn't make anything seem dull.
The Coen brothers have thrown all the traditional components of a "great" film - a perfect score, incredible on-screen chemistry between great actors, happy endings and so on - out the window. There is no reason that it should work, and furthermore no reason that it should be incredible, but it is. This redefinition of the American psychological thriller could only have come from these guys, and they've done it well.
"No Country for Old Men" is a movie of actions and consequences. It challenges viewers to put themselves in the characters' shoes and grapple with difficult moral questions.
