No Country for Old Men (2007)

Premise: While out hunting, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds a mess of dead bodies, several kilos of heroin, and two million dollars. He takes the money, attracting the attention of the local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) and a ruthless killer (Javier Bardem).

This marks the third movie in which I have seen Brolin this year. In the first two, he was delightfully, endlessly greasy. To be quite honest with you, I'd be alright with it if that was all Brolin had to give. He could show up, grease away, and be done with it. I'd ask for nothing more. But then here he is, giving me so much more. So much more I can hardly take it. Llewelyn's not the best guy (he takes the money, after all), but he's not the worst either. His interactions with his wife are hilariously offbeat, his conscience gets him at the worst of times, and he's surprisingly inventive. Brolin succeeds in not just making Llewelyn a strikingly realistic screen presence but someone whose friendship you wouldn't mind having. Considering he does all this with extremely limited dialogue, it's nothing to shake a stick at.

Indeed, writing and directing duo Ethan and Joel Coen, working from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, make this movie as silent as the grave save for ambient noise. The dialogue is slight and infrequent, the movie nearly scoreless. Long shots of men walking through the desert are met with no swelling score, only wind and the crunch of sand and rock. It's beautiful, naturalistic picture, and the lack of a score only adds to its power. For, in a filmography littered with classics, this offering may well be the Coens' materpiece. Their choice to rely heavily on ambient noise ramps up the tension in a movie that does not bring you to the edge of your seat. Oh no, you are plastered to the back of it, weighed down by the intense atmosphere of its imposing terror. You sit stock still and barely breathe.

Assisting in that terror and tension is Bardem, whose Anton Chigurh brings new meaning to the term 'casual menace.' As Chigurh, Bardem is downright nonchalant in his murders and a complete mystery in addition to that. It's a wonder that one man can be so perfectly indifferent to his work and yet have such a dedicated work ethic. And when that work is murdering any number of people in pursuit of stolen drug money, it's chilling.

Jones' Ed Tom Bell is as much a framing device as he is a character, opening with a monologue, then disappearing, then returning later on to observe, it would seem, the cat and mouse game between Moss and Chigurh from the outside. Even so, Bell is a fully realized man in Jones' care, weathered and world-weary but still upright. His final monologue will bring you to your knees.

Ingenious, thrilling, and sometimes playful, this Coen picture is not to be missed. A