Tonight's feature film is No Country for Old Men.
No Country for Old Men was written and directed by the Coen brothers (Ethan and Joel). The cast includes Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Woody Harrelson. It is a western crime drama.
The synopsis will be simple. However, since it is a Coen brothers' movie you know there is more to it than just the story line. Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) is out hunting dear in the desert of West Texas. He shoots and wounds a deer that then takes off. As Llewelyn is tracking the deer down he comes across a group of trucks with what appears to be dead men all around them. He goes down to investigate and realizes that a drug deal had gone bad there. He notices that the drugs are present but there is no money. He figures someone must have survived the massacre and ran off with the money. Only one man is alive in one of the trucks even though he is severely wounded. He asks Llewelyn for some water. Llewelyn isn't carrying any water and so he leaves the man. He starts to track down the man who got off with the money. He finds him a few miles away, dead under a tree from a gun wound. The man has a satchel nearby filled with 2 million dollars. Llewelyn takes the satchel and returns home to his trailer park. In the middle of the night he wakes up because he feels guilty about not giving a dying man some water. He fills up a water jug and heads back out to the desert. While he is back out there other men arrive to find out what happened with the drug deal. They get his license plate information. He gets back home and packs up his wife and sends her to Odessa to stay with her mother. He knows that the men are going to be looking for him and the money. Llewelyn takes off to Del Rio and plans on hooking up with his wife in Odessa when everything has calmed down. However, the people who lost the money hire an assassin (Javier Bardem) to track down the money. The assassin's name is Anton Chigurh. The police are already on the trail of Anton. He has been able to evade them so far. The drug deal goes down in Terrell County Texas where Ed Tom Bell is Sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones). The sheriff recognizes the abandon truck on the drug scene as Llewelyn's and realizes that he is in over his head. He tries to contact Llewelyn through his wife to get him to come in. He won't do it and so Sheriff Bell is racing against time and the criminals to protect Llewelyn from the trouble he finds himself in. When Llewelyn took the satchel of money he didn't realize that there was a transponder planted in the money. Anton is able to find out some information about Llewelyn and with the help of the transponder track down Llewelyn at first. However, Llewelyn was in Vietnam and knows how to take care of himself. Some skirmishes occur where both sides are hurt. Anton and the drug criminals finally catch up to Llewelyn in El Paso and kill him. Sheriff Bell gets to El Paso just minutes late and can't stop what happens. Anton escapes the police.
Like I said, because it is a Coen brothers' movie there is a lot more to it than the story. I recommend this movie. It is a clever remake of a western themed movie. Anton is a bad dude and an awesome character. Llewelyn is a tough guy who holds off an assassin but ultimately can't outrun the fate that befalls those that get caught up in the drug trade. Sheriff Bell's character is a representation of older, better times. Even times where Sheriff's didn't even have to wear guns. I like what it shows about greed, evil, good, life, innocence, and fate.
If you haven't seen No Country for Old Men go rent it and see it. Oh, and did I mention that it won all sorts of awards including Oscars?
I had no idea it was a remake.
ReplyDeleteDid you see any of the MTV movie awards last weekend? There was one short which I thought was pretty clever/funny. Anton makes an appearance in it.
http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/395483/2009-mtv-movie-awards-digital-short-explosions.jhtml#id=1611658
I never would have thought of John Malkovich as being one of the "cool guys" who just walks away from explosions without looking at them. Haha. Funny video!
ReplyDeleteA remake? It's based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, but what film was it remaking?
ReplyDeleteI think he meant a film cleverly styled after western themes while incorporating more modern stylistic thrillers, not a remake of an existing western film...because as you say, this is a "based upon the novel by <>" movie.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I loved the movie right up until the last 20 to 25 minutes or so, when the novel parts ways with it's more action-packed sequences and thrilling nature and slows into a dull, prodding narrative filled expose on the decline of Western civilization and perils of youth-gone-wild. All the "good" people die, in the most inane of ways and the bad guy suffers on, mindlessly on the trail of what? The money? He kills everyone, they are all dead and at that my reason for watching has not only ended but my investment in the movie is blown. In a novel, this sort of ending may work because reading can race and slow in a breadth without killing your will to live. In a movie with this kind of genius running it's guns, it's hard, so hard to watch the slow progression of nothing into nothing. I think when the Cohen brother were adapting the novel to script they should have reworked the ending to be a bit more optimistic and a little less winded (AKA Tommy Lee Jones). Maybe they tried and were shot down by the author, dunno. Just a thought. I give the first 3/4 a 10/10 and the last 1/4 a 7/10.
www.darksunstudio.com
Yeah def not a remake. In my top 20 films for sure.
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