| No Country For Old Men A short review with spoilers I finally saw NCFOM and yeah, it's good. It's also very violent. And symbolic. Our age wasting society is laid bare, and youthful recklessness is undercut: Once "Yes Sir" and "Yes Maam" disappear, the rest just follows.Made in post-911 America, the theme of innocence betrayed is strong, and the good deed is punished. That good deed however, is motivated by the guilt of greed, leading to the destruction of the protagonist. Tommy Lee Jones provides narration and an anchor who mimics Fargo's Chief Gunderson, but stays out of the action to an even greater extent. In the ending scene, a dream recounted by Jones' character, a now retired Texas sheriff, puts the movie into perspective, which then abruptly ends, leaving the protagonist dead, his wife presumable so, and the villain severely injured, but walking away under his own power. I see influences by a couple other movies. Clement Talkington's Love and a .45, is also in my collection of violent movies. One of the bad guys, Billy Mack Black, uses a pneumatic drug injection device (with lethal consequences.) The cattle slaughtering device which is No Time's villain, Anton Chigurh's weapon of choice, harks back to this. Chigurh's use of that weapon is unexplained, and seems a bit contrived, but it is certainly menacing. Jones' sheriff Bell, inadvertently describes the device, without knowing the roll it plays in the events. As second similarity is even more blatant: the plot seems to be derived from Taratino's True Romance, an equally violent movie, but with more humor and a happy ending. No Country pays homage in the exchange between Chigurh and Woody Harrelson's cowboy suited hitman. Their conversation contains the same line as the discussion between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper: It doesn't get any better than this. Both scenes culminated with the speaker murdering the other. The theft of drug money, followed by a series of killings and chases is the format for both movies. Where Romance features well sketched incidental characters, No Country deepens the theme to apply to life's struggle in general. Although I prefer happy endings in my entertainment, I will watch No Country For Old Men again. But probably not as often as The Big Lebowski, also by Ethan and Joel Coen. |
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