No Country for Old Men [2007]
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald
It’s 1980. Llewelyn (Brolin), a seemingly unemployed Vietnam veteran, lives together with his wife Carla Jean (Macdonald) in a trailer in a little town in West Texas. While out hunting one day he stumbles across a massacre out in the desert; several men dead in and around bullet-ridden cars, one filled to the brim with heroine. He finds the last man standing a couple of miles away, dead underneath a tree still clutching his pistol and a satchel filled with two million dollars. He takes the money and becomes the target for Anton (Bardem), a ruthless and world-class assassin with funny hair. Anton is used to people quickly falling prey to his cunning, but finds Llewelyn a tougher opponent than anticipated. All the while, Sherrif Bell (Lee Jones) is trying to make sense of the massacre in the desert and quickly figures that Llewelyn knows or saw something, and that he’s in grave danger.
There’s very little that I can say to criticise this movie. The direction, cinematography and editing is excellently done. Usually I only notice it when direction is bad because I get annoyed at the movie. This time, however, I noticed how beautifully everything was shot, for instance by a great application of cropped shots and close ups. The acting done by the three main characters is top notch, and I thought that the application of gore was done rather well. It wasn’t over the top, but when it was done, it was realistic and not too gratuitous.
I can see how this film won a trillion oscars.