‘NO Country for Old Men” is the first movie I’ve seen in a very long while that deserves to be called a masterpiece. It’s such a stunning achievement in storytelling that, when the DVD comes out, I’d wager you could even turn off the sound and hardly miss a thing.
This really isn’t a movie to watch on DVD, though.
You need as big a screen as possible to savor Roger Deakins’ sweeping cinematography, which is as integral to the movie’s triumph as the edge-of-the-seat direction by Joel and Ethan Coen – or a trio of unforgettable performances by Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones.
Adapting (and, if you ask me, surpassing) a 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy into their best-ever movie and their first Best Picture contender since “Fargo,” the Coens deliver a classic, neo-noir Western of innocence lost set in 1980 Texas.
The film’s moral center is Jones’ Sheriff Bell, about ready to retire after watching the Mexican border turn red with drug trade. With a face as deeply etched as Mount Rushmore, Bell surveys the massive carnage from a heroin deal gone bad on the Texas prairie with disgust and resignation.
We’ve already seen an earlier visitor to the same shootout scene, a hunter named Llewelyn (Brolin) who discovers $2 million in cash in a satchel and is foolish enough to think he can keep the money and live to tell about it.
Bell has been around long enough to know Llewelyn is a gravely marked man. One of his deputies who arrests a man looking for the money ends up garroted by his own handcuffs.
The killer (Bardem), who sports a Prince Valiant haircut and invites some of his victims to flip a coin to determine their fates, is dubbed a “ghost” by the baffled sheriff.
Not only is he virtually impossible to track, but it takes quite a while for Bell to even figure out this psychopath is grotesquely killing people with a compressed-air gun normally used to slaughter cattle.
Bardem’s character, Chigurh, is by contrast ruthlessly efficient at tracking down not only poor Llewelyn but his understandably terrified wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald).
When a drug dealer hires a saner contractor named Carson (Woody Harrelson, perfect in a short part) to find the money, Carson is asked exactly how dangerous Chigurh is.
“Compared to what?” asks Carson. “Bubonic plague?”
The chase takes the men across Texas, in and out of seedy motels and across the border, where a bleeding Llewelyn ends up being serenaded by mariachi singers.
It’s a quintessentially Coen-esque moment, and one of relatively few light touches in a movie filled with shades of darkness – a notable shift for the Coens, whose quirky humor dominated their last couple of flicks, “Intolerable Cruelty” and “Ladykillers.”
A few years ago, they might have played “No Country for Old Men” like a live-action Road Runner cartoon. Now, when people get hurt there are serious consequences; a couple of scenes involving wounds are not for the squeamish.
At the same time, the Coens have pared the dialogue to a minimum, with most of the longest speeches given to minor characters, such as a retired sheriff played by Barry Corbin who puts things in perspective for Bell at the end.
For the leads, they’ve cast three actors who can speak volumes with their eyes and body language, and who make literally every line of dialogue count.
Jones, who gets top billing but has notably less screen time than his co-stars, has never been better or a more commanding presence – just watch when he pours himself a glass of milk from a bottle that Chigurh has left out after visiting Llewelyn’s house.
Bardem delivers by far his most effective English-language performance as the enigmatic, deep-voiced Chigurh, who plays with potential victims in memorable ways (notably a sequence at a gas station).
The breakthrough here is Brolin, whose Llewelyn starts out as a greedy comic bumbler not unlike William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard in “Fargo,” but turns into a character worthy of a Greek tragedy. His best moment: trapped in a hotel room.
Even in one of Hollywood’s best seasons in years, “No Country for Old Men” works as high art and a rousing genre entertainment. Go see it.
Running time: 122 minutes. Rated R (graphic violence, profanity). At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the Cinema 1, the Union Square.