2008 was perhaps one of the most influential years for mainstream Hollywood. Jon Favreau’s Iron Man kicked off what became quickly the highest grossing film franchise ever, while Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight - while technically a comic book movie - also did wonders for the post 9/11, gritty action thriller genre. IGN described 2008 as “one of the biggest years ever for movies”.
However, before the 1970s, the Hollywood landscape was dominated by the Western, which had its ‘Golden Age’ in the 1950s, and went out with a bang with Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars Trilogy’, between 1964 and 1966. Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2007 Best Picture winner ‘No Country for Old Men’, based off of a 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy, is set in 1980. The decade following would see a new wave of Hollywood movies; a complete palette cleanser full of science-fiction and action thrillers in particular. While Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ is in some way a perverted love letter to the Western, ‘No Country’ is about the death of the Western.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The Coens make ‘No Country’ a Revisionist Western, a modernisation of the Western that occurred in the 1960s, with movies such as ‘Ride the High Country’ and ‘Man in the Wilderness’. Revisionist Westerns question the black and white, good guy bad guy dynamic in classical Westerns. Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss, our protagonist, is a hunter, who steals a briefcase full of money from a dead man in the opening, yet goes back to the scene to provide another with water to drink. Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Bell, who can be seen as a coward. Classical Westerns often portray Sheriffs as the brave hero; think 1952’s ‘High Noon’. The villain, Chigurh, may be a psychopathic killer, but spares one victim due to the flip of a coin, and keeps his promises in a twisted way. Revisionist Westerns also portray Native Americans and Mexicans in a less ‘savage’, racist light. The Coens note this, and have an injured Moss wake up to a friendly Mexican Norteño band.
The movie ends not with the BANG of gunshots in a climactic shootout but instead with the voice of Sheriff Bell, talking about his dreams of being “on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night”, “like we was both back in older times”, nostalgic about the ‘good ol’ days’, the days of John Ford and the great classic Western movie. Moss, our unlikely hero, has been killed anticlimactically, off screen, and Chigurh gets away, signalling the end of even the Revisionist Western. Bell’s friend Ellis tells him of the new evil that has slowly been emerging in the country. “You can’t stop what’s comin.”
Chigurh is the manifestation of such evil, who - likely a coincidence - seems like an
amalgamation of the next years’ The Dark Knight’s villains - an ambiguous “agent of chaos” and a man who fell from greatness - both very modern, grey interpretations of classic Batman foes. Chigurh has no clear motive, ethnicity, or personality, constantly contradicting who he portrays himself as, and who others see speak of him as. The violence in ‘No Country’ is gory, bloody, and brutal - likening to Tarantino - compared to men falling backwards and screaming as blood squibs in their costumes explode, in classic Westerns. I would give examples but that would make this a NSFW review.
Javier Bardem’s malevolent villain is a herald of the new Hollywood age, being a sort of unstoppable Terminator himself, and not quite fitting in with the rest of the movie. ‘No Country’ has two absolutely thrilling and intense action scenes that are certainly more ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Aliens’ than ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. The setting shifts from your typical Western desert to urban areas and grimy motels at night, with stark cinematography ripped straight from film noir, later Neo-noir, a genre popularised in the 80s and 90s by directors such as Scorcese and Michael Mann (if there’s one other film I get to recommend today, it’s Heat, which inspired many aspects of the Dark Knight). Chigurh’s superior weaponry feels like a laser blaster, or an Iron Man repulsor beam, compared to the other characters’ rudimentary shotguns and pistols.
Woody Harrelson’s Carson Wells seems like a last glimmer of hope for Moss, like the desperate attempts at genre revival with “Cowboys and Aliens” and “The Lone Ranger”, but he too is disposed of. In the end, the only two men standing are the nostalgic old-timer who reminisces over the old ways, and the new. You can either watch the old Westerns, or embrace the new types of movies.
'No Country for Old Men’ is an excellent thriller that - much like the Coen’s other works - plays with the tropes of a Revisionist Western, but in its anticlimaxes and subversions, heralds the death of the genre it draws from. The Academy made a good choice awarding the Coens 3 Oscars for this gem - as well as an Oscar for Bardem - and while it is not my favourite Best Picture of this century (12 Years a Slave, Parasite, and The Return of the King are pretty much undefeatable in my eye) it is certainly worthy of the esteemed title.