Word: chigurh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...with suspense scenes as taut as they are acutely observed. Moss spends most of his sorry time being chased and shot at: as he tries to ford a river pursued by a varmint posse and a killer dog, or jumping out a second-story hotel window with some of Chigurh's ammo in his gut. Joining the chase, of both Moss and Chigurh, are the venerable, philosophizing Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and a wise-ass DEA headhunter (Woody Harrelson). And every bit of this way, I'm admiring and loving...
...main characters seem to be Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), an ordinary guy who on a hunting trip discovers a lot of money surrounded by a lot of dead bodies, and Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a tough hombre who wants the money back. "Tough," actually, doesn't do justice to this deadpan psycho whose weapon of choice is a pneumatic air-gun. He's a resourceful creature - when apprehended he uses his handcuffs to strangle a cop - and a memorable sickie...
...criminal facetiousness - that their blend of extreme gore and low comedy in such movies as Raising Arizona and Fargo betrays a contempt for both the genre and their characters. If that was ever true, it's not here. No Country has respect for both Moss' can-do resilience and Chigurh's inhuman relentlessness; the film is fascinated with the expertise and poise under pressure of desperate men whose time is running out. For an hour and 40 mins. the film never lets up, deftly charting the itineraries of Moss, Chigurh and Bell as they lurch toward a triangular showdown...
Running after Moss are that world-weary local sheriff, whose name is Bell, and the murderous Chigurh, who works for the druglords but makes it a matter of principle to whack anybody who looks at him funny, and some who don't. Chigurh isn't just testy; he's mesmerized by his power over life and death and fascinated by the vagaries of chance that spare some people and bring others within range of his little air-powered friend. "Even a nonbeliever might find it useful to model himself after God," he tells a prospective victim...
...pitilessly lighted by McCarthy, they somehow mean more than in an ordinary thriller. No Country is suffused with Modernist melancholy, a sense that our civilization is dying and all we have ahead of us are endless salt flats of moral and cultural aridity. Sheriff Bell sees people like Chigurh as avatars of things to come. "I aint sure we've seen these people before," he growls. "Their kind. I dont know what to do about em even." Bell's gloominess sometimes verges on kids-these-days curmudgeonliness, but there are moments when it feels like a genuine diagnosis...