Hollywood’s favorite cinema pranksters, the Coen Brothers, return with another cinematic mish-mash in No Country for Old Men. The film combines two of their most mined sources of material, shop-worn film noir themes and sly Southern colloquialisms, into one unsatisfying whole. It could be Fargo, Texas, but without the hospitality.
Josh Brolin (shown above) plays a man whose otherwise sound Southern morality is tested when he finds $2 million and several corpses in the desert, after a border-crossing drug deal blows up in his back yard. Much like Coen Brothers’ friend and collaborator Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, we get to see how even the most rural and genuine of us can be tempted by greed.
Javier Bardem, an actor normally of great depth and force, plays Brolin’s foil, a slasher-film-esque super villain, who killed all those people in the desert and now wants his money back. Bardem’s talent is wasted on a goofy haircut and elaborate killing device, reducing him to Jason Voorhees levels of silliness.
In the meantime, Tommy Lee Jones is holding things down back at the local café, dishing out the Coen Brothers’ country-fried steaks while putting the pieces of the crime, and his life, together in one insincere swoop. Though Brolin’s character seems real in a laughable, exaggerated way, Jones’ character falls completely flat, and fails to give the filmmakers the balance they sought to create between ho-hum country life and greed-induced murder.
As in the Coen Brothers’ least effective films, we’re laughing at the character, not with him. Cementing that point, Woody Harrelson makes a cameo that takes the jeering tone of the film to uncomfortable proportions.
Typical of a Coen Brothers’ offering, the craft of the film cannot be denied, with frequent collaborator Roger Deakins supplying his usual taste and skill behind the camera. The brothers produce some compelling moments of suspense and intrigue, especially in the first half, and Brolin is its saving grace. However, No Country for Old Men ceases to entertain after its midpoint, and begins filling us with metaphysical excuses for itself.
– Mike Hobart
No Country for Old Men
Directors: Ethan and Joel Coen
122 Minutes, Paramount Vantage
US Release Date: Friday, November 9, 2007
www.nocountryforoldmen.com
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