The Embassy Theatre can make almost any movie worth watching. But it had no need to go to any effort for No Country for Old Men, the latest film from the Coen Brothers.
It is dark. It is depressing. The final scenes for each character are filled with unexpected twists, well-telegraphed incidents, and an overall sense of an absence of Divine Justice. It’s this last theme of the film that struck me the most. Bad people don’t always get a comeuppance, and the innocent and guileless can find themselves in the most terrible of circumstances.
Javier Bardem, as the lead madman, is sensationally freakish as the wide-eyed killer with a twisted code – noone would mock his hairstyle in the 80s for fear of a highly unpleasant confrontation. The rest of the cast are also superb, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones both flawed “heroes” running from and after the merciless murdering machine. The violence is savage even if “tastefully” rendered for the screen, with the killer’s complete lack of conscience for those he eliminates – both those he encounters in relentless pursuit of his goal or those who incidentally get in his way – add an extra chill factor.
Story-wise, it is a fairly straight forward film following a plot that is common enough. Where the film excels of course is in the execution (pardon the pun): brutal, bleak, devoid of a huge score revelling in the carnage. It is a quiet, menacing film, the extraordinary amongst the mundane. I imagine the 80s setting was to allow the Nam references and the absence of mobile phones and other present-day technologies to add an extra layer of suspense and also add to mood of inexorable change to a darker, more violent world than those who fought in World War Two returned to find.
So, would I see it again? Not any time soon. And I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. But it is a damned good film.
Verdict: 45 States out of 50.
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