No Country for Old Men: A-

There's a scene that occurs in Martin Scorsese's 2006 splatterific The Departed just as it's getting geared up: Matt Damon - wound into infinite coils of paranoia, cunning, and self-loathing - is being stalked through the dark back streets of Boston, and as the seconds tick by he jolts and slips through the darkness with ever-increasing urgency (the camera rollicking right along with him in spasms of uncertainty and dread). The nerve-jangling suspense of that chase scene is bone-deep but it lasts not even a few minutes; that same feeling thrums throughout No Country for Old Men for hours (two and some change, to be precise). Where The Departed subsisted mostly on the snappy bad-cop/good-cop/tired-cop schematics of Scorsese's filmmaking, No Country is intrinsically tied into the sort of neo-gothic-Western Cormac McCarthy has made his bread and butter (no surprise then to find the film is based on one of his books). It's lean and quiet, sprawlingly dark, and (on that rare wry occasion) just really, really, entertaining.

Such facets of quality have been served up by Joel and Ethan Coen which is ironic - or in the case of the Coen brothers: ironically ironic - because Country would have best been made by the two of them about twenty years ago, just right after their breakthough noir Blood Simple. It has a lot of stylistic similarities to Simple: sparse but beautifully expansive aesthetic; recurring episodes of fatal violence. Plus, had it been released in 1988 instead of 2007, it wouldn't have shocked audiences too long used to the ol' Coen style: smugly over-ironized black comedies. As it was, the film did indeed shock them; but after that initial gasp (of uncertainty, maybe even fear) came a few more (of delight, of fascination). And then there were the questions. How did they translate McCarthy's cauterized and searing prose into something like this (through something like the Coen Schtick)? How did they do it after so long away from their masterpiece-making roots (last seen presumably with 1996's Fargo)?

Whatever or however, I'm now a believer. The film, which opens with a Tommy Lee Jones voice-over (always a treat) and goes on to tell the story of how one Texas hunter (Josh Brolin) finds two million dollars and then must run for his life from the guy who wants it back (Javier Bardem, chilling even in his wack-a-do haircut), is so perfectly observed, so fundamentally right in its execution, one wonders whether the brothers shouldn't just go ahead and adapt the whole McCarthy library. Rising to any and all challenges is the cast, bleak and battered every one, of which Bardem and Jones, as the small-town sheriff trying also to track Brolin down, are the exceptional standouts. They wince and straight-face and even (in the case of Jones) twinkle with bare-bones wisdom at all the right moments, with all the right amounts of energy. It takes a certain sort of performer to handle the Coen's dialogue and filmmaking technique. Frances McDormand could do it; and now, apparently, so can the good ol' Texans of No Country for Old Men.

In terms of verbal translation, nothing is lost. What's more, and though I've yet to read the literary source, one imagines a little something is gained as the tale transitions to the silver screen. There is a dash of wry wit biting into the edges of the film, relieving your high adrenaline-levels when you least expect it with morbid laughter. But the laughter is the exception: usually you'll just be gripping the seat cushions. Part of this lies in the nature of the story (i.e., there is something innately dreadful about a psychopath who will just not stop) but the bigger part lies in the talents of the writer-director duo who have so subtly but delightfully re-discovered their gifts. There is not a beat missed throughout the movie, not a shot out of place, and even though the underlying mayhem that served as a catalyst for the plot is a little murky, the resutling mayhem is crystal-clear in its bruise-black insistence. Though No Country seems to start to lurch in its last twenty minutes, never does a viewer get seasick. All credit is therefore due to Joel and Ethan Coen - a pair of anarchic filmmakers who turned down their smiling tongues-in-cheek just to turn up the admiration on their fine, fine legacy.