No Country for Old Men (11.29.08)

It's already been in limited theatres for about three weeks but this is the opening day for it in Chico. If you planned on going to the movies this weekend, forget whatever else is playing and see this one. This is the best movie of the year. Even though there is a month left and still plenty of films to be released, I don't think any other film will be better than this one.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is just a regular guy who finds more than $2 million dollars in cash, a truck full of heroin and three dead bodies at a scene that has yet to be discovered by anyone else. He takes the money and runs back to his house, thinking that no one else knows about it. He finds out that he didn't get away without anyone knowing about it. Now he has a ruthless killer named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) chasing after him, trying to get the money back. Llewelyn knows he's being chased and knows that he has to relocate himself. He forces his wife to go live with her mother until things settle down. Anton kills random people at random times, leaving his trail of bodies where they lay, which is where Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) comes in and gets involved. The film's setting is 1980's Texas.

The Coen Brothers have finally returned to their old roots with their best film since Fargo. Mixing dark humor with graphic violence and a very intriguing story, the Coen boys let us know that they still have it in them. Their past couple films have slipped so far into mainstream entertainment that I didn't think they would ever do another film like Fargo or Miller's Crossing. While I liked Intolerable Cruelty, it really wasn't the kind of movie they usually do. I'm all for directors doing new things and I thought they did a good job; it was just weird to see them do a romantic comedy the way that movie was done. I really thought they went kind of overboard when they released The Ladykillers. It had some humorous parts but it definitely wasn't their brand of humor or style of filmmaking in my opinion.

Out of all the Coen Brothers films that I've seen, I have to say that this is their masterpiece. I have never heard of Javier Bardem until now. He is the best actor in the entire film. Anton Chigurh will definitely go down as one of the best villains ever to hit the screen. This film has some of the best kill shots I have ever seen in a movie. I won't give any of them away because I don't want to ruin the surprise. This movie grabs you and does not let go until the very end. And one thing that I found hilarious when I read into the making of this film was about Javier Bardem. He has a very ugly haircut that Joel and Ethan got from an 1890's era picture of a brothel patron and after he saw his haircut, his response was "Oh no, now I won't get laid for the next two months"

This marks the second film that I was glad I got paid to see. The first one was the other Tommy Lee Jones film that came out this year, which was In The Valley of Elah. I'm ranking this one much higher. And with that, I'm going to break the ratings system again.

(Previously broken by rating Dragon Wars a –1 out of 4)

Rating: 5 stars (Out of 4). See it NOW.

Other Coen Brothers recommendations:

Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Bad Santa(executive producers only), Miller's Crossing, Intolerable Cruelty.

And one more film to recommend: If you want to see Tommy Lee Jones in a modern western film before he was in this one, I highly recommend The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. He also directed it and he shows that he is a great director as he is an actor. I also think it should have had more attention than the incredible but way over-hyped Brokeback Mountain. They were both released the same year in case you were wondering.