Lambie Reviews No Country For Old Men

Year: 2007
Accolades: Won Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture, Best Directing, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role; One of the AFIs Top Ten Films of 2007; One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
review on Letterboxd: 'No Country For Old Men' Review by Avalanche

By all accounts this film should not work. There's a lot of shots of the country, it almost no score, it very little dialogue, it has Tommy Lee Jones in a role that seems to serve very little purpose, and it (apparently) follows the book it is based on very closely. Put together, these factors should be a recipe for disaster.

Instead, what we get is a film that is arguably quite deserving of the awards and praise it has received. The plot meanders with no seemingly coherent direction, but the film is constructed to suggest that this is how it's supposed to be. What it essentially boils down to is two men engaging in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, while everyone else gets caught in the crossfire. And because these two men are constantly trying to outwit each other, there is no telling what is going to happen or where they might end up.

Every time there is some sort of stand-off, or even the slightest suspicion that trouble lies on the other side of a door, there is an incredible amount of tension that builds up. Sometimes there's nothing there, but sometimes the paranoia is justified, and this paranoia boils over into every action these characters take.

Basically, the film draws you in and then keeps your attention stuck firmly to the screen. Considering the nature of the film as a whole, the entire experience feels almost like watching a sort of visual poetry. And that's the key to this film. It's not so much what the film is about but rather how we experience and react to it.

If I have one complaint it's that the ending doesn't seem to have enough substance to it to be entirely satisfying, and a few elements end up seem as though they conveniently (or inconveniently) come out of nowhere. However, the journey that gets us there is still more than worth it.