Sociopath Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is hired to recover a satchel of money in No Country for Old Men. (Richard Foreman/Miramax Films)
Serial killer Anton Chigurh has an improbable Little Dutch Boy haircut and a black space for a soul. Such is the merging of directors Joel and Ethan Coen — visual wits and lovers of silly hair — and American author Cormac McCarthy, a man who has spent a career scouring a dusty North America for some sign of providence.
Adapting McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men, the indie directors retreat to the bleak territory they mined so well earlier in their careers, recalling the genre tossing of Blood Simple and Fargo. Even the colours are muted to a range of sandy browns and greys that cover west Texas. There, on the edge of Mexico, evil-made-manifest Chigurh (Javier Bardem, in a brilliant, unshakable performance) is hunting down an everyman (Josh Brolin) who stumbled upon a “satchel of money” (a phrase that sounds best with a Texan accent). Morality is a movable feast in No Country, but Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is the closest thing to good, a man equally familiar with horror and honour. As the sheriff tries to track down the killer and his prey, Chigurh runs a bloodbath that floods the west, and his tool is a cattle stun gun.
For those who prefer their Coen Brothers surreal or cute (see: The Ladykillers, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), this explosion of existentialist anger may seem turncoat. But at a time when America has a new and intimate understanding of violence, the film feels like an epiphany, a return to urgency from two indie masters.
No Country for Old Men screens at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 8 and 10.
Katrina Onstad writes about arts for CBCNews.ca.
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