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'No Country for Old Men'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

November 9, 2007

Few actors convey the fatigue of disillusionment as plangently as Tommy Lee Jones.

In "No Country for Old Men," Jones plays Sheriff Bell, the latest in the actor's growing gallery of principled civilian warriors who have been around long enough to see fundamental rules of conduct made obsolete by the iniquities of an unprincipled few. "I thought when I got older, God would come into my life," he says with a deflated spirit you could cut with a knife, adding, "He didn't."

God would seem to be missing in action in the Coen brothers' gorgeously chilling adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel. That hiatus may be temporary in the case of Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a basically decent ex-GI Joe who, amid an afternoon's hunting, stumbles upon the corpse-strewn aftermath of a drug deal gone violently awry. But the absence of a moral compass is potent enough to prompt Moss to make off with an ungodly sum of drug money, and leave a man behind to expire in the dust with his dead amigos.

In the case of Anton Chigurh, the unstoppable brute behind the bloodbath, evidence of a divine being appears never to have entered the picture. As portrayed by an unnervingly demonic Javier Bardem (glowering like some desert-rat Sweeney Todd from behind sunken eyes and a forklift mop of hair), Chigurh slithers in for the kill with an implacable calm and air of irrevocability that makes one gasp. (Think Robert Mitchum in "The Night of the Hunter"). To keep it interesting for himself, he lets his victims flip a coin for their lives; even when they win the toss, you get the sense they'll be having nightmares for the rest of their days.

"No Country for Old Men" takes the form of a breath-bating, triangular cat and mouse in which Sheriff Bell attempts to head off Chigurh as he pursues Moss to reclaim the suitcase of drug money. There is considerable collateral damage; innocent people have a regrettable way of blundering into Chigurh's path, and they instantly cede any claims to mercy by virtue of their own haplessness.

It's bruisingly violent, even for the Coens, who seem to be as much in the thrall of Chigurh's sociopathic whims as their other characters. But the pools of blood are flecked with Coen-ish streaks of puckish humor, personified by a prickly trailer park manager (a hilarious Kathy Lamkin) and a corporate gun-for-hire (Woody Harrelson at his cocky best) who seems unfazed by Chigurh's Zen-like malevolence.

There is a marked absence of music - not even a note spills from a car radio - a pointed choice that ratchets up the film's distinctly muted tension. An ominous stillness pervades, as well, the classic nocturnal photography of Roger Deakins, who imbues the film with a perpetual sense of things about to spill.

This may be one of the best ensembles ever to conspire over a Coen brothers movie. Beyond the three complementary leads, there are beautifully shaded turns by Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt and Tess Harper, who provide some needed human warmth in a distinctly chilly landscape. "No Country for Old Men" is as close as the brothers Coen have come to making a masterwork, but one whose pleasures may be too arid and unforgiving to surrender to entirely.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (R). Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin spin into butter in a three-way crime chase, set against a bleak Texas border landscape of the 1980s. This acerbic, darkly poetic Coen brothers' take on the Cormac McCarthy novel is calculated to give you the willies. Roger Deakins' shadowy cinematography almost upstages the uniformly superb performances. 2:02 (strong graphic violence and some language). At area theaters.