Here's the thing: perfection's hard to come by. Calling a movie "perfect," to me, reeks of massive overstatement — no person is perfect, so how can a movie, which is made by people, possibly be?
I bring this up because I'm very tempted to call "No Country for Old Men" perfect. Howard Hawks once defined a great movie as having "three good scenes, no bad ones." "No Country" doubles that formula. There's not a false note in the whole flick, a violent, spare neo-noir/Western about Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a Texas hunter who, after stumbling upon a lot of dead bodies and even more money, is pursued by both a world-weary lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) and an assassin named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who might just as well be called the Angel of Death.
The ways in which these three men collide with one another make for the most exciting, profound, and deeply disturbing film experience I've had all year. But I'm still loath to use "perfect." So, here are some superlatives I feel more confident in dropping.
An adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel, "No Country for Old Men," the film is that rare bird: a literary adaptation that actually improves on terrific source material. I'm slightly biased here — I think McCarthy is the greatest living American writer, and "No Country for Old Men" is the book that got me hooked on his work.
But in translating it to film, writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen have done something rather wonderful. They've nailed the feel of the novel, for one. There are sequences in the flick, Moss' discovery of the money, or Chigurh's introduction, for example, that play out exactly how I imagined they would.
But they've also managed to streamline the novel, highlighting and elucidating themes that McCarthy's lean, tough prose made deliberately elusive. The result is a narratively richer and supremely confident piece of filmmaking, with the Coen brothers expertly modulating every beat.
In many ways, this doesn't feel like a traditional caper from the brothers. Most of their staples — kinetic camerawork, heavily stylized dialogue and supporting characters strange enough to be second-stringers for the cast of "Freaks" — are missing.
We get little reminders here and there: in the intensity of the violence, in some of the exchanges between Moss and his deputy (a very funny Garrett Dillahunt, from "Deadwood" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford") or in the memorably odd appearances by a mariachi band and a border-patrol cop at the most incongruous of moments, but overall, the Coens are markedly restrained.
Guided by Roger Deakins' career-best cinematography (who's worked with the Coens since 1991's "Barton Fink" and also shot "In the Valley of Elah" and "The Assassination of Jesse James …" this year), they let scenes unfold in real time, often with very little dialogue and no music whatsoever — maybe 10 words are spoken on-screen in the flick's spellbinding first 25 minutes.
This doesn't feel like a copout. Rather, their restraint is proof-positive of the confidence they have in McCarthy's novel, and it allows them to dazzle with peerless cinematic craft. This flick is a masterpiece of formal construction, hearkening back to the minimalist thrillers of Jean-Pierre Melville.
The Coen brothers have made some of the most enduring flicks of recent years: "Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona," "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski." Here, they've outdone themselves — "No Country for Old Men" is their masterpiece, the best film they've ever made.
And three actors doing some of the best work of their careers headline it. That's not to knock the rest of the cast — everybody in the supporting cast does good work, particularly Woody Harrelson as a wise-ass bounty hunter and Kelly McDonald as Moss' sweet wife (McDonald has maybe the most affecting scene in the flick. You'll know it when you see it). But without Bardem, Brolin and Jones, the flick wouldn't work as well.
Bardem is getting the most attention, and Lord knows, he deserves it; his Chigurh is both an indelible Coen creation (right up there with The Dude from "The Big Lebowski" and Officer Marge from "Fargo") and the most memorable screen psycho since Hannibal Lecter. The Best Supporting Actor Award is going to this man next year, mark my words.
Far less showy, but just as impressive, are Brolin and Jones. This is the year of Josh Brolin, and Llewellyn Moss is the third, and best, "great" performance the ex-Goonie has turned in (just behind his Detective Trupo in "American Gangster" and Doctor Block in "Planet Terror"). Brolin is effortlessly charismatic and likeable in what could be a fairly standard variation on "The Fugitive" archetype — we're rooting for him every step of the way, even as his actions directly and indirectly result in horrible bloodshed and carnage.
As Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, Jones is wonderful, prickly and funny and deeply sad and far more interesting here than in the over-wrought "In the Valley of Elah" (also featuring Brolin). It's his best work since the original "Men in Black." As a character … well, that's a bit more tricky. Bell is both the most and least important character in the flick. That sounds odd, I know, but if you think of it as a Greek tragedy where the protagonist is a member of the chorus, you're on the right track.
It's Jones' character that ultimately gives the flick its greatness. For about an hour and 45 minutes, "No Country for Old Men" is just a crime thriller. It's a ridiculously well made and intense example of the genre (and the closest the Coen brothers have ever come to making a full-bore action movie), but there's not a whole lot separating it from a potboiler by someone like James M. Cain or Elmore Leonard.
And then, something … changes. I wouldn't dream of spoiling it, but it's that change that elevates the flick above and beyond its genre trappings. Let's just say that the flick works on two levels: it's both highly realistic and visceral and highly allegorical and contemplative.
McCarthy, and by extension the Coen brothers, have far more on their minds than a robust genre exercise; they're deeply unsettled by the casual atrocities of the world today, and the last 15 minutes of the flick bring that unease to light, without being preachy or didactic in the slightest. The tone becomes meditative, elegiac. And before our eyes, this little crime thriller has morphed into something far rarer and impressive: a brutal and poetic ode to nihilism, all reflected through the troubled and compassionate eyes of Sheriff Bell.
As a movie fan, I wish every film could be as good as "No Country for Old Men." It's immaculately crafted in every department, thought provoking, and genuinely exciting. I'm still not sure if I can call it "perfect," but I can, with all certainty, say this: it's the best American film I've seen all year.
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