Movie Review: No Country For Old Men

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.

Wow. What a "different" movie this was. It's from directors Ethan and Joel Coen, so I sort of knew what to expect going in, being a fan of Fargo, Raising Arizona, O' Brother Where Art Thou and The Big Lebowski. But this movie is similar yet different. Sure, it's quirky and not very straight forward, but it's also much more brooding and suspenseful while the subtle comedy is only in the form of black humor. As with other Coen films, there's a lot of attention to detail. And oh, there is violence. Buckets of brutal violence.

Tommy Lee Jones is excellent as usual as a Texas sheriff. Perfectly cast. Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson also both rock in their roles. But the guy who I thought really stole the show is named Javier Bardem. He plays a psychopathic killer named Anton Chigurh and his two weapons of choice are a silenced shotgun and air-compressed gun used to kill cattle. He's like an evil old west version of The Terminator or something.

Oddly enough, there was no music in the film. It seemed to amp up the suspense and I actually jumped in my seat a few times.

Overall, the picture it paints is bleak. The dialog is dead-on, and I found it to just be very intriguing storytelling.

Lots of people talk about how it ended, and I would have liked a different ending maybe too. I'm not sure what would have been appropriate though. It's just dark and cynical.

I'd file this somewhere between Raising Arizona and Natural Born Killers.

8.5/10