Friday 20 January 2012

No Country For Old Men

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Year:2007
Country of origin:USA
Director:Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Genre:Crime thriller
Starring:Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, Tommy Lee Jones
Rating:5/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/
Tagline:There Are No Clean Getaways
Favourite line:"What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss."

Debate has raged since the Coen's won the best director gong as to whether the award was given for this movie in particular, or because it was simply their turn, almost as a lifetime achievement award. Given the quality of the movie itself, I would have to strongly dispute the latter notion.

The plot:
An everyday Joe - Brolin's Llewelyn Moss - stumbles upon the remnants of a drug-deal gone bad. Corpses are decomposing whilst, in a suitcase, $2,000,000. Moss takes the case and does a bunk.
Inevitably, when dealing with such a sum of cash, there are people who want it back, badly. One such person is Javier Bardem's maniacal, psychopathic Anton Chigurh, a ruthless killer, cold, emotionless who closes in on Moss using a tracking device placed inside the case. With Tommy Lee Jones' useless cop in charge of the investigation into the trail of corpses being left behind in Chigurh's pursuit of the money, it seems the only question worth asking is when will Moss be killed, not if.

With stunning cinematography throughout - seriously, each and every shot just oozes class - and stellar performances from all of the leads, this is top quality cinema.
Bardem's performance as the sadistic and brutal Chigurh is one to freeze the blood, and a more menacing screen presence I am hard-pushed to recall.
Though Blood Simple or Fargo may be considered the masterpiece of the Coen's by purists, surely this one offers some fairly stiff opposition.

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