No Country for Old Men, He Said

The Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan, have returned to violence as a way of entertaining their fans. Regardless if it's ferrets in the bathtub (The Big Lebowski) or killers freezing and putting their victim through a log shredder (Fargo ), these guys need no help in investigating the grotesque. But help they got from none other than the man's man writer, Cormac McCarthy. Based on his novel of the same name, the princess's of reality weirdness take us into the wild west of the nineteen seventies , where the drug trade, rather than cattle rustling, is really just getting interesting and the violence is escalating with the profits.

Young Llewelyn Moss, Josh Brolin is hunting on the barren desert landscape, when he runs into ample evidence of a drug deal gone very bad. A number of men and a couple of dogs lie dead in a circle of bullet riddled trucks and four wheel SUV. Moss finds a pick up full of dope. He also finds one of the combatants alive, barely, but able to ask for water. Moss also figures that one of the bad guys has set off on foot across the desert. When he finds him he finds a briefcase full of cash. Taking the more liquid of the assets, Moss retreats to his trailer home and his wife. That night, Moss returns to the scene of the massacre in sympathy for the survivor. While he is on the scene the bad guys show up to find out what happened to their friends, their drugs and the money, and so begins the journey.

Moss is aware that although he evades their first attempt to kill him, they will find him if he doesn't run. Packing his wife off to her mothers, Moss fades from the surface. Enter killer psychopath Anton Chiqurh, played by Javier Bardem. This guy is smart, ruthless and undeterred by any plea for mercy. His psychotic character represents the best bad guy that will ever quake your knees. Once you're in his grasp, you're effectively dead.

In the background, we have the Sheriff Tom Bell, Tommy Lee Jones, who is going through a personal crisis's. Does he want to continue in the family heritage of law enforcement in this age of automatic weapon wielding drug gangs? If he doesn't, what will he do?

Will Moss elude Anton and live to enjoy the money? Will Anton get his just deserts and die a horrible but justified death? Will Tom Bell, as he attempts to save Moss from his own greed, answer the riddle for the middle age rs, to work or not to work, when the career gets old and tiring. I would say to see this film for the answers, but don't expect to leave the theater with a smile on your face or the warm feeling in you heart. TheCoen's have never been about Hollywood endings and they don't turn a new page on that score in this one.