Wall of Paul

It took me forever to finally see the Coen Brothers’ much-hailed Western killing spree, “No Country for Old Men,” so the mass media has already chewed the movie over to the point that the flavor is basically out of the chaw. However, since several readers have emailed me asking what I thought of the picture, and it just received its fully-expected armload of Academy Award nominations, I figure I’ll mull it over right now.

Frankly, there’s not much to say about it because there’s not much going on in it. The real story is that critics have been laying reviews on this baby that would make Herman Melville blush. And it seems likely to win Best Picture come February, over a far more significant, multi-dimensional study of the darker aspects of the American soul called “There Will Be Blood” (see my Dec. 27th review.)

I’m about 70% convinced by “No Country for Old Men,” if that. Phrases like “mythic masterwork” are being bandied about, but from where I’m sitting, this is a beautifully photographed, sharply edited, convincingly performed half-empty vessel, one that’s largely propped up by its Cormac McCarthy pedigree.

That’s really what’s going on here. The source material buffs and shines a grinding parade of ugly, point-blank violence that, for all its technical virtuosity, tells us nothing more than “some folks’ll kill ya sooner than look at ya.” If you haven’t watched a television or read a newspaper in the past 40 years, this might surprise you. The script is more provocative than the Coens’ recent bouts of extended, up-the-sleeve-snickering, to be sure. But it’s not much more than that, and repetitive to boot.

Again, there’s no reason to outline the entire plot at this late stage of the game. But, to summarize in mythically overheated terms that reflect the type of reviews the movie has been receiving, Javier Bardem is The Angel of Death, cutting a Swathe Of Darkness across the Open American Highway while pursuing Innocence Lost, in the form of cowboy-booted Josh Brolin. Tommy Lee Jones is The America That Used To Be, sad-eyed and soul-tired, just a-wonderin’ how we all started goin’ to hell in a hand-basket. Things used to be so different, ya know. I’ll have another cup o’ coffee, there, Thelma Jean.

You see, this is a dark and troubling meditation on the battle of Good vs. Evil. Take a couple steps back, though, and it’s a guy with a funny haircut blowing people’s brains across the room with a high-pressure slaughterhouse prod. Over and over and over and over again, in case you missed it.

When you get right down to it, any movie in which an honest policeman hunts a remorseless psychopath is a meditation on Good vs. Evil, just as roughly half the movies that get released each year are about “an ordinary man thrown into an extraordinary situation.” Phrases like that are the butter and eggs of the narrative process. The trick is whipping a full meal out of it, and I simply don’t think the Coen brothers have done it this time. And they seldom do, if ever.