Monday, January 12, 2009

No Country for Old Men



The boys and girls at work have been highly recommending The Strangers as a good film to see, but some exhaustive searching this Saturday uncovered nothing but a single copy in Ipswich, priced at £15.


So instead I returned to Blockbusters and rented No Country for Old Men for £3.50 - a long time recommendation of D's.


What a brilliant film!

It perfectly captures the creepy spendour of Cormac McCarthy's border country of the Southern United States, and it features three intriguing and very real characters.

I suppose we've got two heroes and one super nasty villian, who, as the film progresses, may be the devil himself. The dialogue and acting are brilliant, the photography is beautiful and the whole thing moves along effortlessly...

There was so much to enjoy; from our cautious and rather resourceful hero, who is ultimately doomed, to a superfically competant and experienced sherrif who gradually realises he's outmatched and scared of the villian.

Favourite scene: The sheffif and his rather young and dim deputy have just ridden into the horror of a drug deal gone wrong; at least seven men lie shot dead on the dusty scrubby semi-desert, there's a dead dog, and four or five shot-up pick-up trucks, riddled with bullet holes...


Deputy: Hell of mess ain't it sherrif?


Sherrif: Well it'll do, leastways till the real mess gets here.


McCarthy's arcane dialogue manages to be witty and profound at the same time.

Shame on me for missing this one when it was in the cinema, and I wonder which director will pluck up the courage to film Blood Meridian, the most violent and nasty piece of Literature ever written?

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1 Comments:

Blogger Dave said...

Glad you caught up with this at last. You must admit the Coens pulled it off this time.

7:14 pm  

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