No Country for Old Men

Let me start off by saying that writing a review for this film is a painful challenge. I am having difficulty even starting to explain the brilliance of the Coen Brother's greatest film. It is ironic that the premise of the film can be so simply explained, however the film itself would require an excruciating discourse in order to qualify the themes, motives and properly capture the characters themselves in one review. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy the film's premise is simple: a botched drug deal causes an ensuing cat-and-mouse drama, as three men crisscross each others paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. The film's protagonist Llewelyn (Josh Brolin from Goonies) discovers a suitcase of money on the scene of the drug deal and as a result Chigurh, a serial killer (Javier Bardem) must chase him down while the local Sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) struggles to catch up to the two while on a personal journey of discovery for himself. IMDB reports "Contrary to most successful films made from books, much of the film's action is taken word for word from [Sheriff] Cormac McCarthy's novel and to boot occurs in the same order of events. Bell's final speech in the film, for instance, can be read on the final page of the book."

The film itself takes upon itself great burdens of great emotion and intriguing passages into a character that carries death with him everywhere he goes. The film is best put by Roger Ebert as a "masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate." The theme of fate is one that I would say dominates the film's premise. What is the fate of Llewelyn? What is the fate of those who cross the path of Chigurh's coin toss? What is the fate of those that continue to live in monotonous routines without end or dynamism? What will be the fate of Chigurh? Who lives? Who dies? And finally, what conclusions will the sheriff reach about fate, life and his journey as he embarks to solve his own personal puzzle while solving the surface mystery? I can't help but dip it into the horror genre as it startles and scares the viewer, however it is so much more than a horror or mystery movie as the viewer is not only startled, mortified and caught guessing, but also attempting to paint each character's circumstances of isolation along with how they are ironically connected. All three characters are loners in three different ways and yet they are all trying to find each other. Llewelyn is the only intentional loner whose main intention is to remain unfound, uncompanioned and yet ironically is the only one who is married. Chigurh is a nomadic loner who takes upon himself a grim reaper burden to find others in order to either make sure they take advantage of the life he has saved with the flip of a coin, or allows fate to end their path which allows him to continue on his own. Finally the Sheriff is a loner not because of anything he has brought upon himself, but because the forces and people around him either continue to die or push themselves away and he vexes himself in an attempt to make sense of it all. While all three characters are isolated in their own unique ways, they are placed in a very isolated setting, in the middle of nowhere desert to further contribute to the loner motif.

Anton Chigurh: What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: Sir?
Anton Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: I don't know. I couldn't say.
[Chigurh flips a quarter from the change on the counter and covers it with his hand]
Anton Chigurh: Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Call it?
Anton Chigurh: Yes.
Gas Station Proprietor: For what?
Anton Chigurh: Just call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Well, we need to know what we're calling it for here.
Anton Chigurh: You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.
Gas Station Proprietor: I didn't put nothin' up.
Anton Chigurh: Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?
Gas Station Proprietor: No.
Anton Chigurh: 1958. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
Anton Chigurh: Everything.
Gas Station Proprietor: How's that?
Anton Chigurh: You stand to win everything. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Alright. Heads then.
[Chigurh removes his hand, revealing the coin is indeed heads]
Anton Chigurh: Well done.
[the gas station proprietor nervously takes the quarter with the small pile of change he's apparently won while Chigurh starts out]
Anton Chigurh: Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.
Gas Station Proprietor: Where do you want me to put it?
Anton Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.

IMDB.com reports some amazing facts about the film:

Heath Ledger had been in talks to play Llewelyn Moss, but withdrew to take "some time off" instead.

The Coen Brothers used a photo of a brothel patron taken in 1879 as a model for Anton Chigurh's hair style. Looking at its weirdness after getting the hair cut, Javier Bardem said "Oh no, now I won't get laid for the next two months".

In the novel (but not in the movie), Sheriff Bell says of the dope-dealers, "Here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge." McCarthy set the story in 1980. In 1979, in San Antonio, Federal Judge John Howland Wood was shot and killed by rifle fire by a Texas free-lance contract killer named Charles Harrelson. Actor Woody Harrelson (Carson Wells in the movie) is his son.

The weapon used by Anton Chigurh is a captive bolt pistol. It is most widely used in the slaughter of cattle to stun the animals before they are butchered.In conclusion, I'd like to know others interpretations of the final piece of dialogue in the film by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell when he shares a dream he had and then the movie ends immediately afterward:

Ed Tom Bell: Alright then. Two of 'em. Both had my father in 'em . It's peculiar. I'm older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one I don't remember to well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he's gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

Personally, I think his dream fully illustrates the isolation that the Sheriff feels as an individual and as a result of what is around him in an isolated place. It also justifies the title, that the cruel landscape with its cruel characters that still roam it for whom or why he cannot explain, other than to think that it ain't no country for old men like himself (just as his father passed him by in his dream and had his time, it's a changing world and now its his time to realize that he can't handle it anymore and should retire). I am interested in reader's comments for this film as the interpretations of each character can be highly ambiguous, which contributes to the film's raw complexity.

CONSENSUS:

Rotten Tomatoes give this move a 94% rating

Zoom In Analysis will AGREE with this rating

Each character's complexity and background could engage a round table discussion for hours. The conclusion of the film immediately urges the viewer to watch it again and the themes of the film take stabs at a new side of darkness that has previously been either unexplored or done without success.