“This country is hard on people.”
That line, spoken by an ailing ex-sheriff, captures the relentless grimness of No Country for Old Men. A stoic Texan stumbles across the carnage from a drug deal gone bad and makes off with a satchel full of cash. A crisis of conscience causes him to return to the scene and he soon finds himself being tracked by a psychopathic killer charged with finding the money.
The movie was adapted from the book by Cormac McCarthy. I was critical of his spare, stilted writing style in The Road (his most recent book), but it translates well to the screen here. Perhaps that’s because this is a movie about hard men who don’t have a lot to say. All of the performances are good, but Tommy Lee Jones is especially good as the small-town sheriff who is baffled by the brutality that has come to visit his little corner of the world. The Coen brothers have always done noir with flair and this is probably their best film in a decade.
