No Country for Old Men (2007)
Directed by Joel Coen
Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon dead bodies, $2 million and a hoard of heroin in a Texas desert, but methodical killer Anton Chigurh comes looking for it, with local sheriff Ed Tom Bell hot on his trail. The roles of prey and predator blur as the violent pursuit of money and justice collide.
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40 films that influenced No Country for Old Men
What critics say influenced No Country for Old Men
The incursion of relentless evil on jus' folks' decency recalls Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter."
After Moss notices a briefcase containing two million dollars, he absconds with it in a gesture highly reminiscent of the characters in the 1998 “A Simple Plan,” a much more successful essay on the moral and physical hazards of appropriating ill-gotten gains.
As usual, original music by Carter Burwell ("A Simple Plan," "Miller's Crossing," "The Ladykillers"), who has scored the bulk of the Coens's oeuvre, is pitch perfect.
He tries to summon Hemingway rather than Faulkner, and the page-turning text reads like a movie treatment — say, A Simple Plan meets The Terminator .
His main pursuer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in Robert Wagner’s haircut from “Prince Valiant”), is Death, without a pale horse.
It's telling that in Sam Peckinpah's 1972 film of The Getaway, the entire El Rey ending is junked and replaced by a scene where Peckinpah has Steve McQueen blowing away scores of bad guys in the director's trademarked slow motion.
I kept expecting something like the conclusion to the wonderful 1972 Sam Peckinpah movie “The Getaway” based on a Jim Thompson novel.
He basically did that to Warren Oates in his later film, Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.
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The dry Texas landscape recalls Blood Simple, the quietly measured menace recalls Miller's Crossing or Barton Fink.
Skip back past their recent fluff — not that Intolerable Cruelty and especially O Brother, Where Art Thou? are not as sublime as fluff gets — and recall how Fargo and Miller’s Crossing and Blood Simple simply Blew.
As they have done while romping through the cinematic crime catalog - "Blood Simple," "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and with "Raising Arizona" - the Coens find, and open, a rich vein of humor amid the spatter and sputter of blood.
The hat in Miller’s Crossing bears more than a passing resemblance to Forrest Gump’s feather, just as The Big Lebowski’s tribute to Busby Berkeley makes one wish for a Busby Berkeley number instead.
It makes Miller’s Crossing feel like The Big Lebowski.
"No Country for Old Men" is more "Miller's Crossing" than "Fargo," cinematographer Roger Deakins shooting "Blood Simple's" Texas clime through the heated palette of his "O Brother."
The Coen brothers' (“Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Raising Arizona”) adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel of the same name is the duo's first film in about three years, and with the way “No Country for Old Men” turned out, I wish they would think about making one every year.
As they have done while romping through the cinematic crime catalog - "Blood Simple," "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and with "Raising Arizona" - the Coens find, and open, a rich vein of humor amid the spatter and sputter of blood.
They can pull off bravura camerawork (Raising Arizona), dark wit (Fargo), or chair-gripping suspense (Miller's Crossing and, now, No Country for Old Men.)
The Coen Brothers have always been known for the ease with which they've jumped from genre to genre -- screwball comedy with Raising Arizona, gangster saga with Miller's Crossing, neo-film noir with Blood Simple, etc. -- but with their superb new picture, No Country for Old Men, they seem to be tapping from various wells at once.
They are responsible for writing and directing such classics as Fargo, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing and The Big Lebowski.
Their latest works as a continuation of their modern noirs Blood Simple and Fargo, but also as a shaggy-dog tale in the mold of The Big Lebowski.
There are some superficial similarities between “No Country for Old Men” and both “Fargo” and “Blood Simple,” and it has been widely assumed that this film is in some sense a return to the Coens’ roots as genre-film enthusiasts.
Working from their own script, the Coens ("Fargo," "Blood Simple") craft a violent, engrossing movie that never telegraphs or condescends; it keeps its twists and its surprises close to its bleeding heart, which is significant because in this movie, that heart is often hemorrhaging.
The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel ("Miller's Crossing," "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), wrote and directed "No Country for Old Men" from the 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy.
Enter the world of Joel and Ethan Coen, from the frosty “Fargo” to the brutal “Blood Simple.”
The Coen brothers' (“Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Raising Arizona”) adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel of the same name is the duo's first film in about three years, and with the way “No Country for Old Men” turned out, I wish they would think about making one every year.
The dry Texas landscape recalls Blood Simple, the quietly measured menace recalls Miller's Crossing or Barton Fink.
With this film, the Coens have distilled the essence of McCarthy's gash-deep nostalgia for the illusory, ephemeral past--complete with his sparse language and uncompromising way with violence--and packaged it in the very best moments of their own well of extraordinary visions: the hotel Hell of Barton Fink ; the folksy voiceover and panoramic shots of the dying West from Blood Simple; the failed assassination attempt of Miller's Crossing ; and the procedural (sans mercy) of Fargo .
If Barton Fink is a joke beside John Fante, what makes No Country for Old Men so good?
Skip back past their recent fluff — not that Intolerable Cruelty and especially O Brother, Where Art Thou? are not as sublime as fluff gets — and recall how Fargo and Miller’s Crossing and Blood Simple simply Blew.
With very few exceptions (dare I remind everyone of “Intolerable Cruelty”?), pretty much every film they touch is a brilliant masterwork.
Joel and Ethan Coen have drawn blanks with The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), The Ladykillers (2004), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and The Big Lebowski (1998).
This is not a comedy (at least not in the sense that Raising Arizona and Intolerable Cruelty are), but that doesnâ??t keep the Coens from inserting little moments of dry, dark humor, many of which are the result of Tommy Lee Jonesâ?? laconic wit.
Instead of Fargo or Blood Simple , we’ve been getting The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty .
Texas has always been a popular myth for directors, from the Texas-in-Utah of John Ford’s The Searchers to the Texas-in-Canada of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven.
Vibrant amber tones during the day give way to a doom laden blackness at night and in between is some of the greatest "magic hour" dawn/dusk shots since Days of Heaven.
If Bardem is nothing else, he is certainly the scariest actor in a pageboy haircut since Bette Davis made "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"
Miller's Crossing was a sly, unacknowledged blend of two Dashiell Hammett's tales, Red Harvest and The Glass Key; and O Brother Where Art Thou? transferred The Odyssey to the American south in the 1930s.
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In Bardem, the Coens give us the coldest serial killer since Richard Attenborough's turn as real-life murderer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971).
Now, he’s adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian, which makes No Country for Old Men look like Little Women.