No Country For Old Men Review

The world is a fickle thing. Constantly swayed and changed by its societies, always in flux, never settling for a single moment. It is in flux because of people and furthermore its people are always in flux. Some stick with “traditional values” others label themselves as “progressives,” most of them go forward with the best intentions. This ever-changing fabric is of coursed held loosely together with the sanity of time. After all, all things take time to build and all things take time to erode away. One generation follows the other, each one carrying on pieces of their predecessors while at the same time deconstructing the older status quos and building their own unique society. Because of time’s patience, most of us have the time to adapt to our world through reason but what about when we can’t? What about when things just seem to be zooming by us, leaving us in the dust. Leaving us helpless with our own devices to analyze and rationalize a world we never new existed, let alone understood. “No Country for Old Men” begs such questions. Desperately.

I fear to relay the mere premise of “No Country for Old Men” because it sounds like too much a conventional thriller: a man in West Texas stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and discovers a satchel filled with millions of dollars. Drug dealers being the fiscal types that they are, send their most powerful weapon to retrieve their money from him: a cold blooded killer named Anton Chigurh. Meanwhile, the county sheriff also discovers the blood-bath and from that point trouble ensues. Oh! But “No Country for Old Men” is so much more than that. It’s about relationships, and greed and miscalculation and West Texas. Above all it’s about West Texas. From its characters, to cinematography to its tragic subtext it seeks to embody the culture it catalogues.

As I mentioned earlier, “No Country for Old Men” has the fixing of conventional thrillers. However, its premise and plot are merely a canvas for its artists to create. Take for example its characters. The closest thing to a protagonist the film has is Llewelyn Moss, a retired welder Vietnam War veteran. Now, the thing we must understand about Moss, about all the character in “No Country for Old Men” in fact, is that he isn’t stupid. He’s lived in that part of the country for years, he knows, or at least has a good idea about, how drug dealers would react if he took their money. If there is one thing he possess it is hubris. It’s not of the intellect of course; he just thinks he’s in shallower shit than he actually is.

Even if Moss isn’t the protagonist, Anton Chigurh is still the antagonist. Some may try to label Chigurh as psychotic or pure evil. Such a categorization is close but not quite true. Chigurh believes he is a prophet of destiny. He flips coins to determine people’s fate (though other times he doesn’t, which makes the process seem like a formality. Then again he is the prophet). One important thing to remember, though, is that he is still an evil psychotic person. So while he believes himself a mediator of pure destiny he is tinged with a bias, which is appropriate when we consider him in the context of the sheriff. The actor who plays Chigurh, Javier Bardem, deserved the Oscar he received for this role. With the little dialogue he is given, he is forced to flesh out the character with body language and subtle facial control. He squeezes every once of potential out of this character.

Last of the most central characters is the sheriff, Tom Bell. He is an old, desperate man played brilliantly by Tommy Lee Jones. Jones seems to know this sort of character too well. His face is always solemn but never melodramatic. He speaks frankly, in his own none frank sort of way, constantly enforcing into viewers’ minds the ludicrous bloodbath unfolding before him. He also always seems to be step behind Chigurh’s and Moss’ violent game of cat mouse: a protector marred by the fact that he can no longer protect. There is a quintessential line at the beginning of the film as we listen to Bell narrate as the camera pans over West Texas countryside: “I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job … A man would have to put his soul at hazard [now though.] He'd have to say, ‘O.K., I'll be part of this world.’” This line, perhaps more than any other, encapsulates Bell. He’s afraid of this world not because it might kill him. He’s afraid because he’s not sure that if he died trying to change it that it would actually make a difference. He wants to fight this world, not be digested by it.

The Coen Brothers were nominated for cinematography and editing for this film, in addition to Best Picture and directing of course. Their diligent craft can be seen throughout the film. They never waste a second of time, nor make a scene pass by too fast, they keep the pieces flowing naturally and powerfully. They end on a powerful, even if anticlimactic and subtle, note that truly brings all pieces of the film, in terms of subtext, together.

You may have noticed that I have spent much time going on about characters, directing, editing, and other such things much more than any actual events in the film. That’s because ultimately “No Country for Old Men” isn’t about its story. It’s about its characters in its world. Its violent, dark, and seemingly unintelligible world.

*edit: Roger Deakins was nominated for the cinematography Oscar, not the Coens.

The Road Warrior Review

(above, the leader of the gang attacking the refinery)

Pseudo futuristic films can have a haunting effect on us. Why? It is quite simple. More often than not, they give us haunting glances into the future of our societies. Whether its the grim chaos of “Children of Men,” the decrepit and over populated Los Angeles (suffocated by ever present clouds of smog) of “Bladerunner,” or the filthy, poverty stricken shanties of Neil Blomkamp's “District 9;” they all grant us a rather pessimistic, however not too unlikely, vision of our futures. They allow us to examine a more barbaric and darker side of our human condition. “The Road Warrior” seems like it's trying to do the things these films do. However, I think it got a little too caught up in its aesthetic and forgot about almost everything else.

In the beginning of “The Road Warrior,” we watch haunting imagery and listen to an old man that tells us of a great war that threw the world into a an oblivion, wiping out almost the entire population, leaving few alive. He then tells us of how gangs and other such people began to rise to power, repressing and taking advantage of the weak, finally then, he tells us of the legendary Road Warrior and how his wife and child were murdered by these viscous gangs. Of course, this leads to his becoming the road warrior but I think that's obvious here: it is Mel Gibson after all. Anyhow, years later he is now a driving about the Australian outback, presumably because he has some unsettled business with the major gang of that area, looking for some gas. A man he has captured tells him of a small refinery fighting off hoards of automobile loving gang members. Max is intrigued so he scouts out the refinery, looking at all the many, many gang members laying siege to the refinery he can already tell it will be no easy task retrieving gas from them.

The premise of “The Road Warrior” seems to be brimming with potential: limited resources under contention between two desperate groups of people and a morally lost man getting caught up in the chaos of it all. “The Road Warrior” could have taken itself in any number of haunting and pessimistic directions. Alas, though, as I mentioned earlier it gets caught up in its aesthetic. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, right? Just take a look at “Bladerunner,” the film practically sold itself on its environment and aesthetic alone though. Here's the key difference though: “Bladerunner's” aesthetic made sense. “The Road Warrior's doesn't. In Bladerunner, the people of Los Angeles wore mismatched, oddly colored, and old clothing because that was all they had. In addition, they lived in or sought out refuge in the decaying lower buildings of Los Angeles, further emphasizing their poverty. Also we as an audience can see that they live in claustrophobic conditions, walking shoulder to shoulder in crowded public streets. All these elements, the art direction, costume design, and extras, worked in tandem to create an unforgettable world that became all the more haunting by its adherence to realism. “The Road Warrior” on the other hand: its antagonist all dressed like they were hardcore patrons attending a heavy-metal concert or weirdos that randomly selected costumes and trinkets out of a strange sex-shop. The leader of the gang wears a Jason-esque hockey mask, has an incredibly toned body, and wears nothing more than leather underwear resembling the spartan loin cloth from “300.” The main antagonist has a pink Mohawk, draws eyebrows onto his forehead with makeup, and has a loose pants flap over his butt. However, the gang does reflect its absurdness of style in their actions; though at this point I don't think its necessarily a good things. See, gas is a valuable commodity in the region, the gangs need it so they can properly rule over their wasteland, and the people in the refinery need it so they can make a break for the coast. The gang however, doesn't seem to manifest their need of gas besides attacking the refinery. They seem to be searching for reasons to just jump on their vehicles (which also reflect their absurdness in style) and chase things, do tricks, or just kick some dust up into the air. Though, I don't think I would have minded all of its absurdness if it wasn't for a few scenes and characters that made the film seem as if it was trying to be realistic.

There is a scene near the beginning where the people of the refinery send out a few vehicles to try and make it to the coast. They are all stopped and ransacked by the gang of course, but for one vehicle it takes and especially nasty turn: the car it overturned, its passengers are taken out, one is then discovered to be a woman, the other a man. The gang members pin the man to the car with crossbow bolts, then rape and kill the woman. It is without a doubt the most horrifying scene of the film, and it sets a serious tone that all the art direction, costume design, and extras defy. In addition, the man that Max finds and holds captive is dressed up like a true apocalypse survivor, he wears mismatched clothing (tight yellow pants, a big heavy trench coach, and I if I remember correctly pink converse), has ugly, rotting teeth, and looks like he hasn't bathed since running water stopped working, which in this world was a long, long, time ago. These two early, principle elements set a tone for the film that ultimately it cannot live up to.

I can bet there are some people out there that will say things like “give the movie a break, its just tryin' to have a some fun.” To such people, I say this: I am in no opposition to fun. I rejoice in my cinematic junk food. But watching “The Road Warrior” is like biting into a carrot that is secretly disguised as a snickers. It yields little in benefiting your health and only gets in the way of the snickers.