He remains the bogeyman we hope never to meet in a dark alley after midnight. (The book ends the same way.) Who cares? As long as he’s played by Bardem, we don’t have to see him to fear him. The final minutes pose more questions than they answer, the roles are not clearly defined, even the innocent are vulnerable, and we never do find out what happens to the fang-bearing Chigurh. The Coens thrive on screwing around with their audience’s minds, and the movie ends up baffling and empty, shooting a round of blanks. The surprise, horror-flick suspense and cockeyed humor born of human nature are Coen brother trademarks used with maximum skill to turn theater seats into electric chairs. In the ensuing cat-and-mouse game played to the death, varying species of cats show up, but no mice. Across the Texas Panhandle they go-the calloused sheriff who misses the good old days, the brash thief who knows the only way to stay alive is to summon every reserve of guile and imagination at his disposal, the demon predator, and a stupid bounty hunter (Woody Harrelson) who makes the mistake of crossing their paths at the wrong time. In a terrifying performance of hypnotic power, Bardem totes around an air gun for slaughtering cattle, which he uses with ingenuous lust it’s a strange apparatus that looks like an oxygen tank, with a device on the head of the hose that glows key holes out of door locks and foreheads. It’s as intoxicating as backyard rotgut whiskey, and twice as lethal.Ĭhigurh is the modern equivalent of a werewolf-a beast with a lust for blood who sends a shadow across the moon while exploring amusing ways to torture and kill his prey and leaving no human trace. The rest is about the consequences, with one mistake leading to another as a sadistic wacko named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) tracks down the thief, and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones) stalks them both. Thus begins a dizzying, horror-filled roller-coaster ride fueled by greed, revenge and violence that blends lyricism with gore.
Over the top of a butte that looks like a backdrop in a John Ford western, a battered cowboy (Josh Brolin) comes across a gang of corpses left behind in a botched drug deal and makes off with the spoils-a suitcase stuffed with cash. The criminals in faded plaid shirts, patched denims and worn-out boots ride what’s left of the range in bullet-blasted pickup trucks. No Wells Fargo stagecoach depositing new victims and tearing off with painted harlots from the local saloon and schoolmarms in distress. No saddlebags or loyal horses for easy getaways. Tommy Lee Jones gives yet another gritty, ravaged performance as a Terrell County sheriff raised on the folklore of the Old West, now faced with the grim reality of how the world has changed. Based on a popular novel by Cormac McCarthy, it’s about the fickle yet inescapable finger of fate and how it points to the taut, ruthless participants in a Texas crime gone terribly wrong.
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