No Country is uncharted territory

I was going to write that No Country for Old Men is unlike anything the Coen brothers have ever done, but such a statement is difficult given the brothers have tried their hands at just about everything, from thrillers (Fargo, Miller’s Crossing) to stoner comedies (The Big Lebowski) to a film noir experiment (The Man Who Wasn’t There), and the occasional stab at mainstream popularity (Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers).

But, in relation to their other work, No Country for Old Men is probably the least Coen-like Coen brothers movie yet. It is a minimalist thriller without a single drop of the quirk-factor that characterized their previous films (so, in other words, no Steve Buscemi). It’s also easily their best movie since Fargo, and one of the best of the year.

Here’s the gist: in 1980, a cowboy wannabe from Texas (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the remains of a shoot-out and finds a suitcase full of cash. Meanwhile, the killer responsible (Javier Bardem) escapes police custody and we’re launched into, if I may descend to cliché, “a deadly game of cat and mouse.” Revealing any more of the plot would be cruel and evil.

Top-billed Tommy Lee Jones actually has the least screen time of the three leads, but his performance here, as well as In the Valley of Elah, reminded me what a subtle actor he can be. Toronto International Film Festival patrons may remember Josh Brolin in the Coens’ segment of Chacun son Cinema, where he essentially played the same character. I never really noticed Brolin before, but the Coens put him to good use here. The dominating performance, though, is Javier Bardem—chillingly understated as a pure sociopath. (Incidentally, are the Farrelly brothers still trying to put together that Three Stooges movie? Because it just struck me that Bardem could be a hell of a Moe.)

The actors are good, but the film really belongs to the Coens. This is easily the most suspenseful film of the year. There are no cheap thrills—the Coens use little music, and there are no great revelations about the Bardem and Brolin characters to trivialize the story. They trust their carefully built tension to carry the film, and respect the audience’s intelligence. They also don’t wrap things up with a neat little bow, and if this movie does indeed turn out to be the Oscar-bait the studio is hoping for, it might restore my faith in the Academy. This is a great, engrossing piece of filmmaking.