No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (****)

Without question, No Country for Old Men is a movie that you need to see more than once to really understand. I was able to discern enough on my first time watching it to know that I really liked it, but I will certainly have to go back and watch it at least one more time to fully grasp everything that the Coen brothers put into the film. Hearing from other people who have seen it, I'm not alone. The film has a lot of subtleties that are easy to miss, and doesn't hold your hand with a lot of exposition explaining everything there is to know. Even if you don't want to feel like you have to study the intricacies of every scene, however, No Country for Old Men is still a tremendously exciting movie, and the reasons why it gets so much praise aren't hard to see at all.

First and foremost, this film is a huge departure from their previous films with both serious and funny elements like O Brother Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski. This movie is very dark and very muted and much more grounded in reality than the lighter side of Coen brothers movies. It sticks very close to the book on which its based, (so I'm told) and a lot of the film's dialog is lifted from it.

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I put this off for way too long to remember what else I was going to write, but basically cliff's notes: its a very solemn, and subtle movie with a classic "unknown is more frightening than the known" type of villain that I think needs to be seen more than once to really appreciate.

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