No Country For Old Men

Enigmatic indie darlings the Cohen Brothers unleash their latest slice of ultraviolent Americana upon our screens in early 2008. No Country For Old Men is a modern day Western adapted from the novel of the same name by the behemoth of American litereature Cormac McCarthy. The film follows antelope hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who stumbles upon the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone belly up near the Mexican-American border in Southwest Texas. Taking a satchel containing $2.4 million in cash but leaving behind a truckfull of heroin and a badly wounded witness Moss finds himself and his wife pursued by all manner of thugs, psychopaths and ex-special forces agents.

The cast includes Tommy Lee Jones as a guilt wracked local sherrif who tries to atone for his actions during World War Two by resolving to protect the two fugitives and recover the money and Scotland's Kelly McDonald as Moss' wife. Spanish born actor Javier Bardem, last seen in Goya's Ghosts, gives an apparently magnificent performance as the psychopathic Anton Chigurh, a seemingly unstoppable assasin charged with the task of recovering the stolen money. Reports suggest that Bardmen, who's Chigurh dispatches his victims with a cattle bolt gun to the skull, is a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination.

The movie is seen as a return to the classic noir roots of their earlier films for the brothers who's last outing, an ill advised remake of the Ealing classic The Ladykillers, was greeted with howls of derision from critics and which audiences stayed away from in droves. While No Country For Old Men is also adapted from source material, early word from Cannes suggests that this the brothers most fully realised movie to date. Ecstatic reviewers suggested a brutal but poetic meditation on man's capacity for violence, greed and redemption played out against the stunning backdrop of the American West. As with any Cohen Brothers movie expect moments of extreme carnage intercut with off-kilter humour and a masterful eye for cinematic detail. Incidentaly the film's title comes from W.B. Yeat's poem Sailing to Byzantium. No Country For Old Men is released here on the 8th February 2008.

S.B.

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