No Country for Old Men
Directed: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin
Based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, one man finds money in a bag around a bunch of dead bodies and when he takes it, he gets in the middle of a mess between an old school sheriff and a bad ass guy that flips coins for human lives.
I love the Coen brothers. Not all their movies are winners, but the good ones are really, really good. I would rank this up there with one of the good ones. What I love about them is the dialogue that they write for simple folks. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when the killer is having a conversation with a local gas station owner. I found it hilarious.
I also enjoyed the killer guy with his weird code of when you kill someone and when to spare them their life with a toss of a coin. He didn’t always do this. Sometimes, they just got a shot to the head with an air gun normally used on cattle. He also had a nifty page boy haircut. Javier Bardem was very impressive with being extremely scary, especially in the beginning scene when the camera just focused on his eyes while he strangled the life out of a man.
Josh Brolin plays the man who comes across the money in a failed drug exchange. Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff who is trailing him and the killer. Brolin was fine. Jones was entertaining. I went back and forth about if I wanted Brolin to keep the money since he was a good guy that saw an opportunity and took it, or Jones should get it since he’s the good guy, or the killer should since I guess it was his before Brolin took it.
The ending is very up in the air, but I liked it. There are a few different ways it could have ended and you really aren’t sure what happened. Some people in the audience didn’t like it, but I liked that I ended up thinking about the movie more than if it explained everything.
Rating: A
Tags: cormac mccarthy, ethan coen, javier bardem, joel coen, josh brolin, no country for old men, tommy lee jones
