NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN [2007] review

January 6, 2008 · Print This Article

Opening with a still camera and views of a still vista, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN for its entirety is largely a still movie, a still movie that is completely taunt and engrossing until the very end. For the first few minutes I had forgotten it was a Coen Brothers movie, but then the trademark violence and look of the film jogged my memory. The movie is set in west Texas in 1980. In 2000 I drove right across the whole of Texas, including the west of it, and it didn’t look all that different in 2000 than it did in NO COUNTRY’s setting. … You might think, “how can so many gunshots ring out and no one comes?” Take a drive through west Texas and it won’t be hard to understand.

…I knew nothing of the story of NO COUNTRY, and it turned out to be one of those movies that I begin thinking, “so this is what the movie is going to be about, really?” I thought it was going to focus on Tommy Lee Jone’s sheriff, but the focus for a majority of the film is on a duel between two unlikely opponents. The way this duel plays out is, well, all I can say is highly original and I believe it worked.

…I was fortunate to get to watch a very high resolution version of NO COUNTRY, and I recommend the same for anyone who can’t see it on the silver screen itself. The characters pay attention to details, and the Coens’ lens shows all those details beautifully, even though west Texas is mostly an ugly place, relatively. This is a very finely crafted film.

…There was less of Lee’s sheriff contemplating the fate of how things were compared to how they are than I thought there would be in the movie. … I could have listened to another hour of those tales. What I would really like to know is, why have things become so much more violent?

…NO COUNTRY doesn’t answer those questions, it just shows you one big reason why it is necessary, but can anything like that even be prepared for?

…I get that there are no answers.

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