No Country for Old Men

Day 67 - 3/8/09 - Movie #65

BEFORE: Went to the "Split Thy Skull" festival (strong beer...) with Amy today. So I slept a few hours after returning home in the late afternoon. Still, I need to get my movie in for the day, so let's follow up "U.S. Marshals" with another Tommy Lee Jones movie.

THE PLOT: 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.

AFTER: Honestly, I'm not sure how (or why) this film won the Best Picture Oscar. Sure, the hitman character is cool, but all the killing just seemed so pointless (or was that the point?) We spend all this time rooting for Josh Brolin's character - why? It's not even his money, so why do we feel he deserves it? And his unwillingness to give the money up is his undoing - did the violent killer deserve it more? Who IS the villain here - are there no heroes? (other than Tommy Lee Jones, that is, but how effective does HE turn out to be?)

RATING: 4 out of 10 tent-poles

UPDATE: 4/1/09 - Upon further review, I think my initial rating was a little hasty. And it's not because the film won the Best Picture Oscar, or because so many people seem to hold it in high regard....

After typing up my review last night, I got to thinking about this film again on the subway ride home. My initial problem was with characters of questionable morality, but thinking back on films like "Raising Arizona", "Barton Fink" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou", I realized that the Coeniverse (pat. pending) is chock-full of such types. We root for H.I. in "Raising Arizona", despite the fact that he robs convenience stores. He seems to want what's best for his wife, but it's strange logic that justifies kidnapping a baby. The main characters in "O Brother" are escaped convicts, and we root for them as well. And I'm still sorting out the morals on display in "Big Lebowski" and "The Man Who Wasn't There"...

Similarly, Josh Brolin's Llewelyn wants what's best for his family, but he still steals money that isn't his. Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh is a killer, but he kills according to a set of rules. He seems to have a moral code - it may not be the same as yours or mine, but it IS a moral code. He might kill based on a coin toss, or the wrong answer to a question or if you have something he wants, but he does NOT kill randomly.

I keep coming back to "Raising Arizona" - Randall "Tex" Cobb's Biker From Hell is a lot like Chigurh. He's tough, you don't want to cross his path, but he does seem to live according to his own twisted morality. The showdown between Llewelyn and Chigurh reminds me of H.I. vs the Biker, only without the comedic elements.

The movie raised such deep questions about morality for me - it made me THINK, (and isn't that what a film is supposed to do...?) so I think it deserves at least a 6 on my scale, if not a 7.