- Every time I see Cormac McCarthy’s name somewhere, I want to call him Cormac McLaggan. Just needed to put that out there.
- I was reading an article a while ago — one of IMDB’s daily links that for god knows what reason they don’t ever bother to archive even though they archive other daily info like polls or news alerts — about the death of the romantic comedy or something like that and the second part of the two part article was talking about how all American movies can essentially be boiled down into morality tales where there is a definite Right and a definite Wrong. This was one of the few criticisms I saw about The Departed last year. In Infernal Affairs (which I still haven’t seen), the rat inside the police force (i.e. the Matt Damon character) not only survives the film but apparently is never outed as the rat, which provides a nice bit of moral greyness to the story. Contrast this with Matt Damon’s character getting outed by Leonardo DiCaprio and then killed by Mark Wahlberg, wrapping the story up into nice little compartments of Right and Wrong. (I think it could be argued that this is the only way a Scorsese movie could end, but that’s a different discussion all together.) Now, accepting this theory* that all American films are black-and-white morality tales, this movie would be decidedly un-American. Don’t go into this movie thinking it will clean up nicely. It’s not going to end with a bang. The loose threads won’t be tied, trimmed, and tucked out of sight. The characters we’re supposed to be rooting for, the ones who would be considered Right or Good in any other movie, are the ones who end up six feet under. The one who would be Wrong or Bad survives. I think a lot of people will have a problem with the ending, but that’s what happens sometimes.
* And you don’t have to. I’m not sure that I do, but for the sake of argument I’m accepting it for the moment.
- I think I mentioned this when I saw American Gangster, but I feel like Josh Brolin, like Casey Affleck, is omnipresent this year.
- And similar to but not quite as ecstatically as with Casey Affleck, I’m developing a weird crush on Josh Brolin.
- This is the most suspenseful movie I’ve seen in a long time. Usually you get one or two truly suspenseful scenes in a movie that’s actually supposed to be suspenseful, but in this movie the hits just keep on coming. Llewelyn Moss, the Joe Nobody who finds $2 million in the desert after a drug deal gone wrong, and Anton Chigurh, the psychopath murderer trying to track down the money Moss stole, play a super intense game of cat and mouse as Chigurh tracks Moss from town to town. You’re left wondering if Moss is incredibly smart or incredibly lucky (or both), or if Chigurh is ruthless but somewhat inept since he continually catches up to Moss, engages him with a flurry of bullets every time, and yet never manages to kill him. There was actually one part where Moss was hiding around the corner of a building and I actually started craning my neck as if my armchair contortions would actually allow me to see around the corner of the building to see if Chigurh was still in pursuit.
- I can only ever think of Kelly MacDonald in the context of Trainspotting.
- This movie is funny. Hysterically funny, as any good drama should be.
- I kind of really adored the sheriff’s sidekick. His delivery of certain lines that would have otherwise been pretty benign suddenly made them absolutely hilarious. Loved him.
- On the list of jobs I would never want to have, being a customs officer at the border between the U.S. and Mexico is pretty high on the list.
- My one complaint about this movie is with Tommy Lee Jones’ character’s storyline. The movie starts with a voice over by the sheriff and ends with a monologue by the sheriff, but there’s something in the delivery of these bookends that actually made me stop paying attention. I felt like his character was there to be half-assed about everything while he’s trying to solve the crimes and so I was only really half-listening to him whenever he spoke. Hmm.
- When the sheriff was telling Carla Jean that story about modern techniques for killing cattle and he was like “I’m not sure why I’m even telling you this” (paraphrased), you kind of just want to smack him upside the head and connect the dots since earlier he and his deputy are puzzling their puzzlers over what kind of device can create a large entry wound like a bullet but only penetrating a few inches deep. On the other hand, his inability to connect the dots here probably fits more in line with the nature of the film not dealing in absolutes.
- Loved how the bad guy had more principles, really, than the good guy. Twisted principles, yes, but principles nonetheless.
- This movie is awesome for including one of my favourite movie clichés: when wounded men treat their own stab or gunshot wounds. You knew Chigurh was a seasoned pro at this sort of thing the second he a) stole the needles from the drug store and b) spread out the giant sheet of plastic on the floor to prevent blood stains.
No Country for Old Men
INTENSE.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.