Stars:
****
Rating: R for language and very intense
violence
Run
Time: 2 hours, 2 minutes
The Brothers
Coen torch the big screen – again – with a western thriller saturated in
carnage and character.
Think West
Texas circa 1980, an unyielding wasteland of desolation. Loveable loser Llewelyn
Moss (Josh Brolin) is hunting antelope when he finds himself wrong place wrong
time; in the middle of a shady drug deal gone bad. A ghostly tableau of stripped-down
pick-ups, bullet-ridden point men, a stash of heroin and a satchel containing
$2 million. Hello opportunity!
But there’s a
new law in town in the form of a homicidal psychopath sporting an unbecoming
pageboy and wielding a killer cattle stun gun (Javier Bardem as chilling Anton
Chigurh). The implacable Chigurh wants his cash back and will stop at absolutely
nothing to get it.
The third player
in this captivating triad is world weary local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee
Jones) who slowly, laconically, puts the pieces together; a step behind but progressively
gaining ground.
An unlikely
trio drawn together in a sinister roundelay of cat-and-mouse and hurtling
towards a dramatic encounter with destiny.
The Coens
return to form, creating their most idiosyncratic characters since Steve
Buscemi’s Carl Showalter faced down the wood chipper in “Fargo”. No one builds
dread like the Brothers; it seeps from every frame and crests on a tidal wave
of bloodlust.
Bardem’s
Chigurh is magnificently malevolent; out evil-ing the most notorious killers to
grace the silver screen. Coldly calculating with a gruesome darkness in place
of a soul. Brolin is vulnerable yet dedicated to his own strengths (as they
are). Scripting is true to Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, hauntingly
minimal but terse and effective.
Mature,
brilliant filmmaking at its finest.