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Research: No Country for Old Men (film)

Reviews

A River Runs Through It.(Movies)(No Country for Old Men)(Movie review) McMurtry, Larry.

The Rio Grande has long inspired the best -- and darkest -- of stories. The author of 'Lonesome Dove' explores a new film chapter: 'No Country for Old Men.'

{{Citation | last = McMurtry | first = Larry | author-link = Larry McMurty | title = A River Runs Through It | magazine = [[Newsweek]] | volume = 150 | issue = 19 | pages = 58 | year = | date = [[2007-11-05]] | url = }}

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2007 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Any reuse, distribution or alteration without express written permission of Newsweek is prohibited. For permission: www.newsweek.com Newsweek, Nov 5, 2007 v150 i19 p58 Byline: Larry McMurtry

If we allow that Cervantes kicked off the novel with "Don Quixote" in 1605, then prose fiction took the bit in its teeth and rode unchecked for nearly 300 years before some sourpusses began to insist that the novel was dead. Western films had nothing like that long a grace period. Within a year or two after the release of Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" in 1903 (not the first Western, but surely the first milestone in that elastic and irreplaceable genre), critics claimed that the Western was dead, killed while still in the delivery room by bitter Eastern winters and the quickly exhausted scenic possibilities of New Jersey and its environs. Fortunately, D. W. Griffith, Carl Laemmle, William Fox and a roving band of proto-moguls took a liking to a southern California village that had been established as a temperance community. The village was called Hollywood, and temperance was not what it would come to be known for.

At first, Westerns were produced anywhere an actor could mount a horse: many couldn't, but the infant studios made do. Around 1914, William S. Hart teamed up with Thomas Ince to make a swarm of Westerns. The desert town of Victorville, Calif., proved to be a near-ideal location, the anti-New Jersey of cheap moviemaking. For years, Victorville proudly housed the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum. I have seen a few silent Westerns, but the one I'd most like to see is a 1911 release about Billy the Kid. Why? Because for a time after he killed his first man, Billy hung out in Mesilla, N.M., a village on the Rio Grande not far from where the river becomes not merely a life-giving waterway to poor Anglos and Hispanics who live along its banks, but also -- on its long sweep southward to the gulf -- an international border. And borders, as we are witnessing today, mean trouble.

North of El Paso, to the river's origins in Colorado, the Rio Grande produces plenty of water politics. But south of El Paso, as it flows through one of the emptiest regions of America, the Rio Grande is a war zone, and long has been. Crossing it from the north, smugglers bring bulldozers and other heavy equipment; crossing it from the south are parrots, macaws, other exotic pets -- and dope.

To this bleakly beautiful country, also for a long time, have trekked filmmakers. I'd bet that a careful scholar (or a decent computer) could locate a hundred movies that use the Rio Grande or the lands that border it as a location. I'll probably never see the 1911 "Billy the Kid," but I have seen "Viva Villa!" (1934), the border movie that has everything: Wallace Beery, Fay Wray, a Ben Hecht script and the brilliant cinematographer James Wong Howe.

In the course of 30 seconds, one could make a personal-favorites list: "Touch of Evil," "Rio Grande," "Rio Bravo," "The Border," "Bandolero!," "Lone Star," "The Wild Bunch," "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean," "The Professionals." Howard Hawks's Western masterpiece may have been called "Red River," but the cattle John Wayne and Montgomery Clift plan to take to Missouri were gathered near the Rio Grande. I myself, with the help of legions, have created and seen filmed my "Lonesome Dove" tetralogy, the last segment of which, "Comanche Moon," debuts this December on CBS. All four segments use the Great River as background, and took a mere 23 years to film. Who said Westerns can't be made? They can, but patience helps.

The novelist Cormac McCarthy has been, for some time, the literary master of the border country. He took possession of it in 1985 with his somber "Blood Meridian," perhaps as violent a masterpiece as we have. He extended his reach with his "Border Trilogy," the first volume of which -- "All the Pretty Horses" -- brought him long- deserved acclaim. I don't think McCarthy's prose is overpraised, but I do think it's been weirdly praised: McCarthy is a realist. His prose exalts the particular, precisely and effectively. His larger concerns seem to be ethical, not oracular, and it would not be unfair to call him a soliloquist. His characters are seldom happy, but they survive -- if they survive -- largely by talking to themselves. What comes to them from the outside is trouble.

There is one major talent, and here are two more: Joel and Ethan Coen, filmmakers with perfect pitch for American accents. They shot their first feature, "Blood Simple," in Texas, and they know that Texas is hard. What they have recently learned is that the border is harder still. Then there's the dark Magus of the Texas Hill Country, land of rock and grit and unforgiveness: the actor Tommy Lee Jones. The Hill Country is hard -- look at his face -- but again, the border is harder. These four talents, complemented by the plangent, austere cinematography of Roger Deakins, convert McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men" into a darkly beautiful border Western that breaks all the rules of the genre and (though not evident in the early movements of this raw, tragic tone poem) of the European policier cheapies from which it distantly derives.

Could the same story happen in the Florida Keys, or maybe on the docks of Marseilles, with the pockmarked French legend Eddie Constantine (a native Angeleno) playing someone like Tommy Lee Jones's Sheriff Ed Tom Bell of Terrell County, Texas -- itself a hole at the bottom of America that contains only two towns, with civilization represented by Interstate 10, 65 miles to the north? The answer is "No way." Man's fate attends us all, but we grapple with our own in particular places, and where people talk and behave in particular ways.

"No Country" (which opens on Nov. 9) happens in bleak, low-rent places, near a border on which extreme violence is the rule, not the exception. It's a border that divides two cultures, each with histories written in blood. I can see why filmmakers are attracted to its visuals -- they are powerfully seductive -- but I prefer to see them on the movie screen because I know, like Sheriff Ed Tom, that there are people on both sides of the river who, if they happen to like your socks, will kill you for them. It's not only no country for old men; it's no country for young or middle-aged men, either. It's also hard on dogs, and hardest of all on women. Some women turn mean, and still others settle into a long resignation before they're even out of their teens. Horses do a little better. Surviving, as opposed to prospering, is often just a matter of luck.

Llewelyn Moss, a young redneck, played with laconic inscrutability by Josh Brolin, is on an antelope hunt when he comes upon a drug deal gone bad. At the scene are many dead, and there's a satchel of money, which Llewelyn takes. Two tours in 'Nam convinces him he's as tough as anybody. He hurries home with the loot and is immediately rude to his young wife, Carla Jean. (This Western, very definitely, is about Bang Bang, not Kiss Kiss.) But Llewelyn knows that bad people will be coming, and at least takes the precaution of sending Carla Jean away, first to Odessa, and as the noose tightens, to El Paso.

Various bad men come, and there is lots of Bang Bang, but the only bad man who matters is a killer named Anton Chigurh. Audiences are accustomed to bad guys of the glamorized evil-genius stamp: Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter, or Patricia Cornwell's Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. Chigurh is not a genius, just a merciless killer, played with chilling restraint by the fine actor Javier Bardem. Chigurh kills methodically, whenever it serves him: twice he toys a little, offering his potential victim a coin toss. The confused owner of a convenience store, not realizing that he's betting his life, calls the flip correctly, and Chigurh walks away.

After about a dozen killings in or near Terrell County, one of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's young deputies suggests that they're chasing a lunatic. Sheriff Ed Tom says no. He doubts the man's a lunatic, and it's here, as the audience is expecting the final Bang Bang, that McCarthy veers straight into ethics and the degradation of manners that occurs when a culture loses all moral poise. Sheriff Ed Tom on the low standards of behavior in the county he's spent his life defending: "It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Anytime you quit hearing 'Sir' and 'Ma'am,' the end is pretty much in sight."

It would be difficult to say it better, and the Coen brothers, at the top of their game, use it. If there's one word for what Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's face reflects during this movie, the word would be Disappointment. He had thought it would be better; he had thought he would be better: "It's a life's work to see yourself for what you are, and even then you might be wrong." Sheriff Ed Tom knows that Chigurh, "a true and living prophet of destruction," as he calls him, is out there still. The sheriff doesn't want to confront him, either. Would it be worth it for a county where people no longer say "Sir" and "Ma'am"?

As for Chigurh, he kills for convenience -- it's the best way to get the job done. Unlike Hannibal Lecter, he doesn't kill for ego. He has no reason to brace Sheriff Ed Tom, though he has no fear of him, either. The film, not so much a thriller as a morality play, ends with a sort of equilibrium -- as if the Lawman and the Killer both subscribe to that old cowboy maxim: "There ain't a horse that can't be rode, there ain't a man that can't be throw'd."

CAPTION(S):

photo

TIM FITZHARRIS -- MINDEN PICTURES-GETTY IMAGES WIDE OPEN SPACES: THE Rio Grande winding through Big Bend National Park in Texas

Document Number: A170390685

What a Country! (No Country for Old Men )(Movie review) (Corliss, Richard)

{{Citation | last = Corliss | first = Richard | author-link = Richard Corliss | title = What a Country! | magazine = [[Time (magazine)|]] | volume = 170 | issue = 18 | pages = 63 | year = | date = [[2007-10-29]] | url = }}

It's a shame No Country for Old Men doesn't officially open till Nov. 9, since it has a villain crazier, scarier and more implacable than any Halloween horror ghoul. As incarnated by the great Javier Bardem, Anton Chigurh is a killer from hell who likes to play mind games with his victims before he makes them play dead. How could an ordinary fellow like Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) hope to elude this monster, when Moss has $2 million that Chigurh plans to get back without saying please?

Even when Joel and Ethan Coen are writing originals, their movies often have the texture and density of novels. For their first official adaptation from a prime American author, they have stayed remarkably faithful to the Cormac McCarthy story, including a detour at the end that will baffle some viewers. But the rest is tough, tangy and thrilling--perfect scenes of rising tension, wily escapes, fatal face-offs. There's one moment (it's just a phone ringing downstairs) that will churn your blood and turn it cold, and plenty other frissons that could make this the biggest hit of the Coens' sly career.

CAPTION(S):

RICHARD FOREMAN--MIRAMAX

Under attack

Brolin faces down that dog

Document Number: A169983212

Coens of Silence (No Country for Old Men)(Movie review) (Schwarzbaum, Lisa)

The Coen brothers' meditative take on Cormac McCarthy's dark novel is quietly terrifying.

{{Citation | last = Schwarzbaum | first = Lisa | author-link = | title = Coens of Silence | magazine = [[Entertainment Weekly]] | volume = | issue = 964 | pages = 48 | year = | date = [[2007-11-16]] | url = }}

EW PICK

No Country for Old Men

Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem

R, 122 mins. (Miramax)

Joel and Ethan Coen have never claimed to be no-frills filmmakers. But in the decades since they lassoed the genre conventions of gory Western violence for their own amusement, and ours, in Blood Simple, the Coens have gotten bloody fancy. And that hyper-controlling interest in clever cinematic style--attentiveness that turned The Lady Killers, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The Man Who Wasn't There into finicky pieces that might as well be viewed under glass has nearly stamped out any hope of feeling any actual feeling.

No Country for Old Men reverses that slide into arch pastiche, brilliantly. It's the Coens' first movie in ages that doesn't rely on snark as a backup source of energy, the first Coen script that respects its own characters wholeheartedly, without a wink. And it's no accident that this measured yet excitingly tense, violent yet maturely sorrowful thriller marks the first time the filmmakers have faithfully adapted somebody else's work to their own specifications and considerable strengths. Cormac McCarthy's marvelous, throat-gripping, best-selling 2005 novel of the same name describes a contemporary American West (the action is set in 1980) where drug trafficking dirties the parched, wide-open landscape that was once home to cattle rustling.

Here, where the value of honor has steadily declined, an average chump named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out doing a bit of unsuccessful hunting when he happens upon a huge cash haul at the scrubby site of a drug deal gone bad. And it's here that Moss makes his first wrong wager: He thinks he can take the money and run. But a simple plan is never simple. Two others are tracking the whereabouts of the windfall, one the meditative lawman Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), worn out by what he has seen of the evil that men do, and the other a singularly psychopathic hitman named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), assigned to retrieve the loot. Chigurh's sense of honor is as twisted as his preferred method of murder--a cattle stun gun to the head, whooomp, dead. (His decision to kill or spare is sometimes decided by a coin toss.)

In Country, the hunters and the hunted are all haunted by an American malaise of emptiness that echoes through the novelist's tersely powerful prose like the constant rush of wind on the prairie. And the movie's biggest surprise may be the discipline with which the Coens convey that rattling, menacing despair. For all the compact intensity of Brolin's vivid turn as a common scrambling man who's not as smart as he thinks, for all Jones' pouchy authority when it comes to embodying Texas vernacular, and especially for all Bardem's thrilling ability to truly terrify (not just with his stun gun but with his glazed stare and baroque pageboy hairstyle), the leading character in this reverberating movie is silence, save for the sights and sounds of air and breath.

Silence deepens the horror of the drug-deal massacre that the lone hunter Moss first glimpses through his binoculars--he spies scuttled pickup trucks, sprawled bodies, even a slain and rotting dog. (More so than that of any of his none-too-blabby costars, most of Brolin's work is wordless.) Silence heightens the exquisite tension as Chigurh tracks Moss, on the run, from motel to motel. (Silence is broken by the beep on Chigurh's radar of a certain tracking transponder that chirps a warning of impending mayhem.) Silence accompanies the mournful sheriff as he drives his Texas highways, and silence is what hangs in the air after Chigurh raises his grotesque, sound-muffling weapon to snuff out one life and then another, cold as hell.

Poet-cinematographer Roger Deakins, who's the Coen Bros.' preferred DP, provides the visual music, the almost painfully gorgeous images of turf, sky, and blood. Sound editor Skip Lievsay and composer Carter Burwell fill the ear with suitable hush. McCarthy's own language, the strong speech rhythms that blow his pages forward so decisively, drives the pace of the adaptation, too, so that a familiar reader need not fear ornery big-screen ruination (despite the elimination of one memorable, secondary character a hitchhiking girl), while the unfamiliar might well be spurred to pick up the book.

The breath of cinematic life, though, the sensibility, the energy, belong to Joel and Ethan Coen, and this is their stirring success. Such a dark epic is no country to be charted with old Coen tricks, and, rising to the material, they prove talented, wise enough men to know it. A-

[BOX]

Backstory

+ Parts of No Country for Old Men were shot in Marfa, Tex.--a city that famously hosted Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean (above), and Dennis Hopper during the filming of George Stevens' Oscar-winning 1956 drama, Giant.

CAPTION(S):

RICHARD FOREMAN

Brolin: haunted and hunted

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: RICHARD FOREMAN

Bardem has killer instincts

Document Number: A170953880

Savvy sibs' creative strategy pays off.(FILM) (Thompson, Anne)

{{Citation | last = Thompson | first = Anne | author-link = | title = Savvy sibs' creative strategy pays off | magazine = [[Variety]] | volume = 409 | issue = 1 | pages = 6-7 | year = | date = [[2007-11-19]] | url = }}

IT'S TRICKY FOR ANY FILMMAKER to navigate the Hollywood system while keeping dignity, identity and creative freedom intact. But the Coen brothers are remarkably adept at doing so--usually to the mutual benefit of the siblings and the studios that back them.

"No Country for Old Men," their 11th feature, is the culmination of all the films Joel and Ethan Coen have made, the lessons learned and the autonomy gained. The $30 million pic, which Miramax, Paramount Vantage and producer Scott Rudin are positioning for awards contention, spotlights a moviemaking model that clearly works.

The Coens have gotten away with their dark, chilly, bloody, wryly funny movies by keeping costs down and working with appreciative producers and studios.

"The Coens have always been extremely smart about what size movies they make for the audience they're after," says Jim Jacks, who produced "Raising Arizona."

Despite the Coens' modest B.O. track record, top producers from Brian Grazer and Joel Silver to Working Title and Rudin, routinely jockey to land their next projects.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We make them cheap," says Ethan Coen. "We have never made a huge amount, never lost a huge amount. We make modest amounts of money. The studios would rather make money, but as long as it's painless for them, we don't represent a threat. If it's not a bad bet, even if it does not pay off in a huge way, they're happy to play."

It helps, first of all, to write your own screenplays. The sibs, who switch off typing chores as they talk out their scripts, recognized from the start the need to fiercely protect their pics from interference. On the set, they direct together, with Joel taking the title of director and Ethan that of producer.

With "Blood Simple," the brothers' first pic out of film school, the Minnesota natives raised $750,000 to make the film with indie distrib Circle Releasing so they wouldn't have to compromise. The darkly humorous and bloody crime thriller was a surprise hit with both critics land arthouse auds.

It also helps to retain final cut, which the Coens did throughout a series of low-budget pics half-financed by Circle and distrib 20th Century Fox. (Their supervising production exec was Rudin.) The $5.5 million fractured family fable "Raising Arizona," starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter and John Goodman, was a modest hit. The prohibition gangster film "Miller's Crossing," inspired by Dashiell Hammett and starring Gabriel Byrne, failed at the box office. And the lurid and surreal Hollywood tale "Barton Fink," starring John Turturro and Goodman, scored big overseas after winning both the director prize and the Palme d'Or at Cannes. (Circle and the Coens owned the foreign rights.)

Cannes turned the Coens into name-brand auteurs, with the duo returning five more times and winning the director's prize again for "Fargo" in 1996 and "The Man Who Wasn't There" in 2001.

When Fox no longer wanted to back the helmers, producer Silver set up the $25 million mock-Capra period comedy "The Hudsucker Proxy" at Warners. While the Coens got a kick out of the iconic producer and managed to talk him out of casting Tom Cruise, going instead with Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman, the movie was a box office disappointment.

Luckily, while Joel was visiting wife Frances McDormand on the set of Working Title's "Hidden Agenda," he hit it off with producer Eric Fellner, who offered to help raise foreign financing, starting with "Hudsucker."

Continuing to score modest returns on the domestic art-house circuit, the Coens' stature grew, peaking at its widest with "Fargo," which won two Oscars, including original screenplay and actress for McDormand.

Paradoxically, the Coens have always been less than collaborative with their thesps. They don't talk much about pegs, and prefer to shoot their storyboards and follow the script word for word.

"We're incommunicative when we don't have complaints," says Ethan.

"They're truly shy," says Josh Brolin, who delivers a breakout performance in "No Country for Old Men," the Coens' adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel. "Even on the set, with us, there's not a lot of dialogue. There's not even a lot of direction. There's a little bit of tweaking. They put a lot of onus on casting it correctly, then they let the actors do what they do."

And the brothers know when to press their case with the studios.

At one fateful meeting at Disney over the release plan for the $30 million "O Brother Where Art Thou?," when the Coens realized that the studio was predicting a modest gross of about $15 million, they asked Mouse exec Dick Cook to consider giving the movie a bigger push. He went the extra mile, and "Brother" wound up grossing $46 million domestically, boosted by its hit bluegrass-folk-country soundtrack.

The Coens make up for minimal paydays on such smaller movies as "The Man Who Wasn't There" by taking on the occasional studio screenplay assignment. Their former Circle Releasing producer, Jacks, gave them a three-week rewrite on the Universal romantic comedy "Intolerable Cruelty." After a parade of helmers flirted with the project, Brian Grazer persuaded the Coens to direct the movie themselves.

It's the only time the Coens have ever made a studio formula picture, with stars who got paid their studio price. Ironically, given the brothers' indie vibe, "Intolerable" is their highest-grossing movie worldwide.

They tried the same process with the $40 million remake of "The Ladykillers" for Disney, but it didn't click with critics or auds. Now, they've returned with their gritty instincts intact via Rudin, who wanted to reunite and saw in them the perfect match for McCarthy's bleak, Texas-twanged Western.

Ethan admits that much of the film's dialogue is "Cormac's dialogue, as opposed to ours." But it's notably more sparse on the screen than in the book, especially when it comes to the movie's laconic villain, Chirgurgh, played by Spanish actor Jarvier Bardem.

As they wrote their first outright literary adaptation, the brothers kept slashing the dialogue. "The less people spoke, the more we liked the way it seemed to work," says Joel.

While Bardem was a lock for the villain Chirgurgh and Tommy Lee Jones an obvious fit for the Texas sheriff, there was considerable pressure to cast a name star. But the Coens insisted on Brolin, and Rudin backed them up. "Scott was an unbelievable ally on this movie," Joel says.

As the Coens edit their sixth film with Working Title and their third with Clooney, the darkly comedic spy spoof "Burn After Reading," starring Clooney, McDormand, Brad Pitt, Turturro and John Malkovich, they're gearing up to shoot another Minnesota movie, "A Serious Man," a '70s-era Job story, in March--strike or no strike.

"The script was locked a year ago," says Ethan. "We shoot the script."

BROTHERS' BOX OFFICE

Top five pics for the Coen brothers at the worldwide box office:

Pic (year) Domestic * Worldwide *

Intolerable Cruelty ('03) 35 121 The Ladykillers ('04) 40 78 0 Brother, Where Art Thou? ('00) 46 75 Fargo ('96) 25 52 The Big Lebowski ('98) 17 46

in millions of $

Document Number: A172050393

No Country for Old Men (Movie review) (Variety: Todd McCarthy)

{{Citation | last = McCarthy| first = Todd | author-link = | title = No Country for Old Men (Movie review) | magazine = [[Variety]] | volume = 407 | issue = 2 | pages = 19 | year = | date = [[2007-05-28]] | url = }}

Author(s):Todd McCarthy. Source:Variety 407.2 (May 28, 2007): p19(1). (1342 words) Document Type:Magazine/Journal

A Miramax (in U.S.), Paramount Vantage (international) presentation and release of a Scott Rudin/Mike Zoss production. Produced by Rudin, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. Executive producers, Robert Graf, Mark Roybal.

Directed, written by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Camera (Deluxe color, widescreen), Roger Deakins; editor, Roderick Jaynes; music, Carter Burwell; production designer, Jess Gonchor; art director, John P. Goldsmith; set decorator, Nancy Haigh; costume designer, Mary Zophres; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Peter Kurland; supervising sound editor, Skip Lievsay; sound designer, Craig Berkey; re-recording mixers, Lievsay, Berkey, Greg Orloff; associate producer, David Diliberto; assistant director, Betsy Magruder; second unit director-stunt coordinator, Jery Hewitt; second unit camera, Paul Elliot; casting, Ellen Chenoweth.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 18, 2007. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 122 MIN.

Ed Tom Bell Tommy Lee Jones Anton Chigurh Javier Bardem Llewelyn Moss Josh Brolin Carson Wells Woody Harrelson Carla Jean Moss Kelly Macdonald Wendell Garret Dillahunt Loretta Bell Tess Harper Ellis Barry Corbin Man Who Hires Wells Stephen Root El Paso Sheriff Rodger Boyce Carla Jean's Mother Beth Grant Poolside Woman Ana Reeder

A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor, "No Country for Old Men" reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent. Cormac McCarthy's bracing and brilliant novel is gold for the Coen brothers, who have handled it respectfully but not slavishly, using its built-in cinematic values while cutting for brevity and infusing it with their own touch. Result is one of the their very best films, a bloody classic of its type destined for acclaim and potentially robust B.O. returns upon release later in the year.

Reduced to its barest bones, the story, set in 1980, is a familiar one of a busted drug deal and the violent wages of one man's misguided attempt to make off with ill-gotten gains. But writing in marvelous Texas vernacular that injected surpassing terseness with gasping velocity, McCarthy created an indelible portrait of a quickly changing American West whose new surge of violence makes the land's 19th-century legacy pale in comparison.

For their part, Joel and Ethan Coen, both credited equally for writing and directing, are back on top of their game after some less than stellar outings. While brandishing the brothers' customary wit and impeccable craftsmanship, pic possess the vitality and invention of top-drawer 1970s American filmmaking, quite an accomplishment these days. It's also got one of cinema's most original and memorable villains in recent memory, never a bad thing in attracting an audience, especially as so audaciously played by Javier Bardem.

Set in rugged, parched West Texas (but filmed in New Mexico) and brilliantly shot by Roger Deakins in tones that resemble shafts of wheat examined in myriad different lights, yarn commences with several startling sequences: A crime suspect (Bardem) turns the tables on his arresting officer, strangles him with his handcuffs, then kills a driver for his car using a cattleman's stun gun; in the middle of nowhere, a hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), stumbles across five trucks, several bullet-ridden corpses, a huge stash of drugs and $2 million in a briefcase, which he impulsively takes. When he returns to the scene of the crime that night, he's shot at by unknown men and chased into a nearby river by a fierce dog before getting away.

Central figures in this tale of pursuit are rounded out by Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), the local county sheriff, who tours the truck crime scene on horseback and in short order gets Moss in his sights, although not as quickly as does Bardem's Anton Chigurh, who is able to tune in to a transponder in the moneybag the unsuspecting Moss has stashed in a heating duct in a local motel.

Death walks hand in hand with Chigurh wherever he goes, unless he decides otherwise. Clearly a killer by profession, the lucid, direct-talking man considers anyone else who crosses his path fair game; if everything you've done in your life has led you to him, he may explain to his about-to-be victims, your time might just have come. "You don't have to do this," the innocent invariably insist to a man whose murderous code dictates otherwise. Occasionally, however, he will allow someone to decide his own fate by coin toss, notably in a tense early scene in an old filling station marbled with nervous humor.

In addition to the pared-down dialogue, pic is marked by silences, wind-inflected ones to be found naturally in the empty expanses of the West, as well as breathlessly suspenseful interior interludes, notably an ultra-Hitch-cockian sequence in which Moss, aware that Chigurh has tracked him to an old hotel, listens and waits in his room as his hunter comes quietly to his door.

It's amazing how much carnage ensues given that the action essentially focuses upon three men playing cat-and-mouse across a beautiful and brutal landscape. Three guys in the wrong motel room at the wrong time get the treatment from Chigurh, and a cocky intermediary (Woody Harrelson) for the missing money's apparent rightful owner makes the mistake of getting in between the trigger-happy assassin and Moss. And they're far from the only victims in a story that disturbingly portrays the nature of the new violence stemming, in the view advanced here, from the combination of the drug trade and the disintegration of societal mores.

The manner in which the narrative advances is shocking and nearly impossible to predict; viewers who haven't read the bestseller will be gripped by the situations put onscreen and sometimes afraid to see what they fear will happen next. Those familiar with the story will be gratified to behold a terrific novel make the shift in medium managed, for once, with such smarts.

The Coens build a sense of foreboding from the outset without being heavy or pretentious about it. They have consistently worked in the crime genre, of course, beginning with their first film, "Blood Simple," whose seriousness perhaps mostly approximates the tone of this one, although there are overlaps as well with "Miller's Crossing" and "Fargo." But while they have eliminated one especially poignant character from the book in the interests of time, slashed Bell's distinctive philosophical ruminations and perhaps unduly hastened the ending, the brothers have honored McCarthy's serious themes, the integrity of his characters and his essential intentions.

They have also beefed up the laughs, the majority of which stem from the unlikely source of the cold-blooded Chigurh. From the outset, the powerful and commanding Bardem leaves no doubt that Chigurh would just as soon kill you as ask you the time of day. His conversation brooks no nonsense or evasion. But it is the character's utter lack of humor that Bardem and the Coens cleverly offer as the source of the character's humorousness, and the actor makes the most of this approach in a diabolically effective performance.

Jones would practically seem to have been born to play Cormac McCarthy roles, and he proves it here in a quintessential turn as a proud longtime sheriff dismayed by what he sees things coming to. Holding his own in distinguished company after long dwelling in TV and schlock, Brolin gives off young Nick Nolte vibes as an ordinary man who tries to outsmart some big boys in order to get away with the score of his life.

Scottish thesp Kelly Macdonald registers potently as Moss' country wife, while tasty supporting turns are delivered by Harrelson, Stephen Root as the latter character's employer, Rodger Boyce as a sheriff who commiserates with Bell, Barry Corbin as Bell's crusty old uncle, Aria Reeder as a swimming pool floozy who offers Moss some company and Gene Jones as the old fellow Chigurh makes call his own fate.

Deakins' stunning location work and precision framing is joined by Jess Gonchor's production design, the Coens' cutting under their usual pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes, Carter Burwell's discreet score and expert sound work to make "No Country for Old Men" a total visual and aural pleasure.

Named Works: No Country for Old Men (Motion picture) Movie reviews

Source Citation:McCarthy, Todd. "No Country for Old Men.(Movie review)." Variety 407.2 (May 28, 2007): 19(1). Gale Custom Journals Database. Gale. Loudoun County Public High Schools. 23 Dec. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/itx/start.do?prodId=SPJ.SP00>.

Gale Document Number:A164719267

FILM REVIEW: 'No Country for Old Men' touches perfection; Kevin Koczwara

University Wire 11-26-2007

(Massachusetts Daily Collegian) (U-WIRE) AMHERST, Mass. -- "Wow!" is the perfect word to describe the Coen Brothers' new movie "No Country For Old Men." The movie is as close to perfect filmmaking as you can get. The dialogue is deep, dark, humorous and humane, all at once. The story line, although violent, is easy to follow and the characters depict the definition of good and evil.

Joel and Ethan Coen have had a string of great movies ("Fargo," "Blood Simple," "Barton Fink") and one cult hit that never seems to get old ("The Big Lebowski"). They write, direct, edit and work hard at what they do. They are a perfect pair of brothers who break the mold of Hollywood each time they make a movie and still sell to the public and critics. "No Country For Old Men" is their best. There is no comparison.

What Joel and Ethan Coen do with the Cormac McCarthy novel by the same name is something beautiful and haunting. The director/writer pair takes on a novel with a few storylines and melds them all together into one movie. They play cat and mouse with the viewers and tease the audience throughout with constant suspense.

Some will cringe at the amount of blood shed in the movie. The killings without mercy will hit the gut but the violence moves the plot along and brings the viewer into the world of the characters. The world revolves around a satchel of missing money, $2 million, drugs and a man who is on a mission - and nothing will stop him.

The Coen Brothers push the boundaries of bloodshed. It is graphic but never so much to offend a viewer. Blood is artfully shown flowing from a body to the feet of a character. There are some scenes that are tough on the stomach, but nothing like the "Saw" or "Hostel" movies. The violence is done well and is used to further the plot. It is very real and makes the viewer very conscious of the violence in society.

To help set up the suspense and eeriness of the Texas landscape, where the movie takes place, the Coen Brothers use nothing but natural sounds for the soundtrack. There is no music throughout the movie. There are background noises to the desert that lies in front of its characters. The long stretches of highway echo with sand blasting against car doors. The house windows have a brisk breeze flowing through them, and any one of the motel lobbies has a TV with its rabbit ears, showing a soap opera or any number of poorly made television shows. What results are atmospheres that heighten all the senses.While the directing and cinematography show stunning beauty and open landscapes, the actors in the movie push the plot and help the audience see the true nature of their characters. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is more frightening than any villain to come out in many years. He is a killer with no conscious and too much care for the little details of each killing. He is polite and all too calm for a psychopath. He has no mercy for anyone, including innocent bystanders. He is described as a "ghost" many times, leaving no one who has seen him alive.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is the unlucky (or lucky) man who finds the satchel of two million dollars while hunting in the desert plains of Texas. He comes across the murder scene of a drug deal gone wrong. He goes out in search of the living person who had seemed to escape the massacre and left a trail. He finds the man, dead, and takes the satchel of money that was the pay for the drug deal. He shows compassion and care after traveling home with the money and returning later that night to bring water to the only survivor.

That would turn out to be a fatal mistake. Leaving his car behind gets his tires slashed. Llewelyn is chased by drug lords who have come to find their money and drugs. He nearly escapes, leaves behind clues to his presence.

Antoine comes into play when he is hired to find the money that was taken. He takes Moss' car's verification number to identify the owner. The chase begins and the blood that had already been spilled is only the beginning. Moss is in for a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the deadliest of assassins.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is trying to track down Chigurh and save Llewelyn Moss and his family. He is old and wise, and has gone soft in his old age. He only has to see the crime scene once to know what has happened and what will happen. He can see into the future and says "If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here," after seeing the initial crime scene. The mess shows up many times, and Bell doesn't need to see it to know the dangers that lay ahead for the Moss family.

The cast of actors give some of the best performances of their careers. The Coens' process for gathering a cast is rigorous and it shows. They write a script and follow it to the very last detail. They direct with more care than anyone. They are not there to preach, either. The movie has a message, it is pretty simple, and yet they never put it in the audience's face. They use the book's style and the biblical figures, which McCarthy is known for, to show the message and let the audience determine it for themselves.

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Aging sheriff trails a man who lives to kill (Mick LaSalle)

No Country for Old Men (film) Easier reading level Reading Level (Lexile): 1040L Citation format:

November 9, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Edition: Advance Section: Datebook Page: E5 Author: Mick LaSalle; Chronicle Movie Critic

Mick LaSalleChronicle Movie Critic. "Aging sheriff trails a man who lives to kill" San Francisco Chronicle (CA)2007-11-09: E5.School Library Collection By NewsbankOnline. Infoweb by Newsbank, Inc. December 23, 2007. Jones holds the moral compass while tracking psycho murderer in 'No Country for Old Men' RATING: (WILD APPLAUSE)No Country for Old Men: Drama. Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Kelly Macdonald. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen . (R. 122 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

At first, "No Country for Old Men" seems like another crime story, smarter than most, filmed and acted with extra care and attention, but a crime story all the same. And then a shift comes - not an abrupt shift of plot or mood, but something that has been gradually built, shot by shot, scene by scene - and it begins to dawn that this is something remarkable.

Other movies remain on the outside, even good ones. "No Country for Old Men" burrows underneath and makes a home in the pit of your stomach. What it is and what it says elude easy definition. The movie is a meditation on American violence and the nature of evil, but it's bigger than that. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy and written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, "No Country" feels positively Greek in its magnitude, a lament about fate, age, time and life.

To see it is like encountering some elemental, wordless truth that everybody knows inside but tries not to face. The movie puts a big hand on your head and forces you to look. Lies, including many so common to movies that we no longer see them, are debunked. "No Country" is not about comforting viewers but disturbing them, and it's not about entertaining in the moment, but about showing something that will linger for days, not with a glow but like the remaining traces of an illness.

That the movie is set in 1980 is perfect. A feeling of pessimism pervaded, of living in a culture in decline, in which everything, including money, was rapidly losing value and crime was rampant. It seems as if things would never get better and would certainly get worse, and worse is embodied here by Javier Bardem as a psychopathic killer, who goes around carrying a tank with a hose attached to it. Does he have emphysema? No, it's an air gun used to kill cattle. He uses it on people.

The first sign that "No Country for Old Men" might be extraordinary comes in the opening minutes, when the psychopath, Anton, strangles someone with a pair of handcuffs. It's the expression on Bardem's face. He looks transported, stimulated and delighted, not in a sexual way (which would have been a cliche), but in some strange way alien to everyone else, as though he's plugged into hell's wall socket. He is truly alive only then, and this makes him someone who can't be talked to. He's not exactly human in the usual sense of the term.

It's startling just how much good writing and good direction can get out of a story about a suitcase filled with money. Josh Brolin plays a welder named Moss who comes across one filled with $2 million. It's in an open field, outside a town not far from Mexico, the site of a mass slaughter. The camera lingers on the dead bodies, some drug deal apparently gone very wrong. Moss does what most people would do, he takes the money, and eventually that puts Anton on his trail. That also puts Tommy Lee Jones, as the sheriff, on the trail of both.

Though Brolin and Bardem probably get more screen time, Jones is the movie's conscience and moral locus. Maybe 15 years ago, the sheriff was as cocksure as the marshal that Jones played in "The Fugitive," but he's weary now. He's older. He's facing retirement, and the evil that he has been encountering in his work is so beyond his understanding that he feels off balance. The movie suggests something frightening: not that the sheriff is off balance because he's getting old but that his age is causing him to see things as they are. In "No Country," the dark revelation of old age is that of the existence of absolute evil and of the essential pointlessness and tragedy of life on earth.

Everything Jones has done onscreen has been in preparation for this role: his willingness to face the worst. His integrity that won't bend to convention. His Southwestern stoicism. His bitter, rueful humor. These elements can be found in many or most of his performances, but they've never been so realized as they are here. In "No Country for Old Men," Jones stares into an abyss. If through him, we don't see that abyss ourselves, then it's only a good movie. But we do, so it's a great movie, and a great performance.

The Coen brothers' screenplay is faithful to McCarthy without being obsequious. In filming it, they play it straight, and the touches of signature humor that are there don't seem like flashes of style, but organic and right. When you're this skilled, you don't have to be flashy.

-- Advisory: Graphic and very personal and disturbing violence.

Memo: E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

(c) San Francisco Chronicle 2007 Record Number: 11CCF61ACDF74D58

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He Found a Bundle of Money, And Now There's Hell to Pay (NY Times: AO Scott)

Citation format:

November 9, 2007 New York Times, The (NY) Edition: Late Edition - Final Section: Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk Page: 1 Author: A. O. SCOTT

Column: MOVIE REVIEW 'NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN'

A. O. SCOTT. "He Found a Bundle of Money, And Now There's Hell to Pay" New York Times, The (NY)2007-11-09: 1.School Library Collection By NewsbankOnline. Infoweb by Newsbank, Inc. December 23, 2007. "No Country for Old Men," adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen from Cormac McCarthy's novel, is bleak, scary and relentlessly violent. At its center is a figure of evil so calm, so extreme, so implacable that to hear his voice is to feel the temperature in the theater drop.

But while that chilly sensation is a sign of terror, it may equally be a symptom of delight. The specter of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a deadpan sociopath with a funny haircut, will feed many a nightmare, but the most lasting impression left by this film is likely to be the deep satisfaction that comes from witnessing the nearly perfect execution of a difficult task. "No Country for Old Men" is purgatory for the squeamish and the easily spooked. For formalists -- those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design -- it's pure heaven.

So before I go any further, allow me my moment of bliss at the sheer brilliance of the Coens' technique. And it is mostly theirs. The editor, Roderick Jaynes, is their longstanding pseudonym. The cinematographer, Roger Deakins, and the composer, Carter Burwell, are collaborators of such long standing that they surely count as part of the nonbiological Coen fraternity. At their best, and for that matter at their less than best, Joel and Ethan Coen, who share writing and directing credit here, combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits, as if they were playing Franz Liszt's most treacherous compositions on dueling banjos. Sometimes their appetite for pastiche overwhelms their more sober storytelling instincts, so it is something of a relief to find nothing especially showy or gimmicky in "No Country." In the Coen canon it belongs with "Blood Simple,""Miller's Crossing" and "Fargo" as a densely woven crime story made more effective by a certain controlled stylistic perversity.

The script follows Mr. McCarthy's novel almost scene for scene, and what the camera discloses is pretty much what the book describes: a parched, empty landscape; pickup trucks and taciturn men; and lots of killing. But the pacing, the mood and the attention to detail are breathtaking, sometimes literally.

In one scene a man sits in a dark hotel room as his pursuer walks down the corridor outside. You hear the creak of floorboards and the beeping of a transponder, and see the shadows of the hunter's feet in the sliver of light under the door. The footsteps move away, and the next sound is the faint squeak of the light bulb in the hall being unscrewed. The silence and the slowness awaken your senses and quiet your breathing, as by the simplest cinematic means -- Look! Listen! Hush! -- your attention is completely and ecstatically absorbed. You won't believe what happens next, even though you know it's coming.

By the time this moment arrives, though, you have already been pulled into a seamlessly imagined and self-sufficient reality. The Coens have always used familiar elements of American pop culture and features of particular American landscapes to create elaborate and hermetic worlds. Mr. McCarthy, especially in the western phase of his career, has frequently done the same. The surprise of "No Country for Old Men," the first literary adaptation these filmmakers have attempted, is how well matched their methods turn out to be with the novelist's.

Mr. McCarthy's book, for all its usual high-literary trappings (many philosophical digressions, no quotation marks), is one of his pulpier efforts, as well as one of his funniest. The Coens, seizing on the novel's genre elements, lower the metaphysical temperature and amplify the material's dark, rueful humor. It helps that the three lead actors -- Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin along with Mr. Bardem -- are adept at displaying their natural wit even when their characters find themselves in serious trouble.

The three are locked in a swerving, round-robin chase that takes them through the empty ranges and lonely motels of the West Texas border country in 1980. The three men occupy the screen one at a time, almost never appearing in the frame together, even as their fates become ever more intimately entwined.

Mr. Jones plays Ed Tom Bell, a world weary third-generation sheriff whose stoicism can barely mask his dismay at the tide of evil seeping into the world. Whether Chigurh is a magnetic force moving that tide or just a particularly nasty specimen carried in on it is one of the questions the film occasionally poses. The man who knows him best, a dandyish bounty-hunter played by Woody Harrelson, describes Chigurh as lacking a sense of humor. But the smile that rides up one side of Chigurh's mouth as he speaks suggests a diabolical kind of mirth -- just as the haircut suggests a lost Beatle from hell -- and his conversation has a teasing, riddling quality. The punch line comes when he blows a hole in your head with the pneumatic device he prefers to a conventional firearm.

And the butt of his longest joke is Llewelyn Moss (Mr. Brolin), a welder who lives in a trailer with his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald) and is dumb enough to think he's smart enough to get away with taking the $2 million he finds at the scene of a drug deal gone bad. Chigurh is charged with recovering the cash (by whom is neither clear nor especially relevant), and poor Sheriff Bell trails behind, surveying scenes of mayhem and trying to figure out where the next one will be.

Taken together, these three hombres are not quite the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but each man does carry some allegorical baggage. Mr. Jones's craggy, vinegary warmth is well suited to the kind of righteous, decent lawman he has lately taken to portraying. Ed Tom Bell is almost continuous with the retired M.P. Mr. Jones played in Paul Haggis's "In the Valley of Elah" and the sheriff in his own "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." It is hard to do wisdom without pomposity, or probity without preening, but Mr. Jones manages with an aplomb that is downright thrilling.

Still, if "No Country for Old Men" were a simple face-off between the sheriff's goodness and Chigurh's undiluted evil, it would be a far stiffer, less entertaining picture. Llewelyn is the wild card -- a good old boy who lives on the borderline between good luck and bad, between outlaw and solid citizen -- and Mr. Brolin is the human center of the movie, the guy you root for and identify with even as the odds against him grow steeper by the minute.

And the minutes fly by, leaving behind some unsettling notions about the bloody, absurd intransigence of fate and the noble futility of human efforts to master it. Mostly, though, "No Country for Old Men" leaves behind the jangled, stunned sensation of having witnessed a ruthless application of craft.

"No Country for Old Men" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). A lot of killing.

Caption: PHOTO: Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men." (PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD FOREMAN/MIRAMAX)

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===ACTOR ON THE VERGE; Javier Bardem, with leading roles in `No Country for Old Men' and `Love in the Time of Cholera,' is poised for Hollywood stardom===

Love in the Time of Cholera (film) No Country for Old Men (film) Advanced reading level Reading Level (Lexile): 1470L Citation format:

November 11, 2007 Boston Globe, The (MA) Edition: THIRD Section: LivingArts Page: 9N Author: Michelle Kung Globe Correspondent

Michelle Kung Globe Correspondent. "ACTOR ON THE VERGE; Javier Bardem, with leading roles in `No Country for Old Men' and `Love in the Time of Cholera,' is poised for Hollywood stardom" Boston Globe, The (MA)2007-11-11: 9N.School Library Collection By NewsbankOnline. Infoweb by Newsbank, Inc. December 23, 2007. MOVIES

NEW YORK - Javier Bardem knows a thing or two about throwing himself into his roles. While shooting a graveyard scene for a film adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera," which opens this Friday, the Spanish actor sunk himself so deeply into his character's grief he ruined take after take by repeatedly forgetting about - and consequently crashing into - an out-of-frame tree branch lingering by the central tombstone.

"He did it four times," says "Cholera" director Mike Newell, recalling the incident with amazement. "Four times. Only the last time did Javier sort of suddenly remember, at the last minute, who and where he actually was and dodged around the branch with a loud grunt."

When asked about the incident, Bardem, a tall, broad-chested stallion of a man, confesses he doesn't remember it and concedes his preference to lose himself entirely in his roles. "I don't know how to do it any differently," says the 38-year-old actor, in a noticeable Castilian accent. "When playing various characters, I can only find freedom within my acting after I let go and completely inhabit somebody else."

True to his word, Bardem proves himself a cinematic chameleon this month with two significant roles in major American productions. In addition to the lead as a lovelorn merchant in "Cholera," the actor can also be seen as a bloodthirsty (and badly shorn) sociopath hunting down Josh Brolin's Texan grave robber in the Coen brothers' pitch-black take on Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men." Both roles are starry showcases for Bardem, who, while a superstar in Europe, remains largely unknown in the States. More recognized for his rumored dalliance with actress Penelope Cruz than for his stunning turns as the rebellious gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in 2000's "Before Night Falls" or a dying paraplegic in 2004's "The Sea Inside," Bardem finds himself on the brink with two passion projects.

In "Cholera," Bardem stars as Florentino Ariza, a telegraph worker who falls for the beautiful Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) as a teenager. After her social climber father (John Leguizamo) bigfoots their budding relationship, the young Florentino pledges and maintains an everlasting loyalty to his love, despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, including her marriage to an aristocratic doctor, played by Benjamin Bratt, and his 622 - yes, 622 - documented love affairs.

Bardem was so eager to play Florentino he agreed to start the month-long rehearsal process for "Cholera" a mere week after wrapping "No Country."

"I'd never done films, especially big ones, back-to-back before, but I really liked both characters and didn't want to miss either opportunity," says Bardem. "After I finished both I was utterly exhausted."

Shot on location in Cartagena, Colombia, last year during the country's notoriously sweltering summer, the production proved a tough slog for cast and crew. The first movie to film in the country since 1986's "The Mission," the production team faced an uphill battle trying to build trailers, find hair and make-up artists, and generally not dissolve in the 99 percent humidity.

"I think if we had known what a big job it was going to be, we might have thought twice," says Newell. "Originally, what we thought we had was a film about interiors - interior minds, interior emotions, interior sets - and it simply wasn't. It was much bigger."

While he was cobbling together a set, Newell also asked his actors to work with movement and dialect coaches for a month prior to shooting so that their physical on-screen aging - the film's chronology spans nearly five decades - would look authentic. Bardem, who spent practically all of "The Sea Inside" bedridden in prosthetic old-age make-up, appreciated the lessons and tolerated the four-hour make-up sessions.

"It's basic that when you look at yourself in the mirror, you have to buy what you see," he says. "Otherwise, there's no action in the world that can make everyone else forget what they're watching on screen."

The actor traces his passion for "Cholera" back to when he first read the novel as a 14-year-old boy.

"I know I was quite young [to have read it then], but my sister was reading it and after seeing it on her dressing table, I ended up reading it three times," says Bardem. "And of course, when I was doing the movie, I was killing the book; I was opening pages all day long. In the case of Florentino, Marquez wrote a lot of great descriptions of him in the book, so it was easy to have a very close idea of what I should do, and for me to understand his motives, his needs, his flaws."

And while an ailing Garcia Marquez never made it to set, he gave Bardem some words of advice over the phone prior to shooting.

"He told me he saw the character as a stray dog, like somebody that has been beaten too much, and is scared of getting beaten again, which I thought was a great idea," says Bardem.

The actor is also quick to defend Florentino's seemingly at-odds love for Fermina while embarking on hundreds of affairs.

"There's a line in the book where Florentino says I could have been unfaithful to her, but never disloyal," he says. "I mean, that's something you'd never want to use to defend yourself against your wife, because she'd kill you, but in the language of Garcia Marquez, you truly understand what he means.

Although Bardem seems a perfect fit for Florentino in retrospect, the Spanish actor was not always the top candidate for the job.

"Originally, we'd looked at doing [the film] the Hollywood way so that you'd get great big Hollywood stars who had dark eyes and dark hair and the right kind of coloring and maybe you could believe them as Latinos," says Newell, who himself was coming to "Cholera" immediately after completing "Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire." "The other option was to take, commercially speaking, a huge risk and go with an actor who we believed in but didn't have the profile a Hollywood star would have and, thank God, we went with the latter. Physically speaking, Javier was not the exact match to the character but he's one of those masterful shape-changing actors."

Born into a popular acting family in Spain's Canary Islands in 1969, Bardem landed his first role at 4 when his mother, the Spanish actress Pilar Bardem, secured a small part for him in the mini-series "El Picaro," which quickly led to other roles.

"I started to work as an extra to get some money," says Bardem in a matter-of-fact tone. "Then when I was 18 or 19, I started to do little roles, but just with the goal of keeping up painting, because I was studying art. But one day, I actually had to say some lines in a film, and I thought, 'This is serious, I should actually prepare,' and I ended up enjoying it very much."

Early in his career, Bardem was usually tapped to play the designated hunk in steamy films such as "The Ages of Lulu" (1990), "Jamon, Jamon" (1992), and "Golden Balls" (1993). The increasingly typecast performer didn't break out of his "stud" mold until the mid- to late-1990s, accepting parts as a drugged-out snitch in "Numbered Days," a detective in "The Detective and Death," and even sending up his reputation as a heartthrob in "Mouth to Mouth."

It was Julian Schnabel's indie drama "Before Night Falls" in 2000, however, that catapulted Bardem to the forefront of critics' best-of lists. His dreamy, yet poignant performance as the AIDS-ridden dissident Arenas, who committed suicide in 1990, earned him the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival that year, as well as the honor of becoming the first Spanish actor to be nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award. He won again at Venice four years later for his depiction of Ramon Sampedro, a real-life quadriplegic who fights for his right to die, in Alejandro Amenabar's "The Sea Inside."

Having only recently begun a serious US cinematic assault, Bardem has already notched films with a range of veteran directors, including Michael Mann ("Collateral"), Milos Forman ("Goya's Ghosts"), the Coen brothers ("They've been my favorite directors since 'Blood Simple"'), and most recently, Woody Allen, for the tentatively titled comedy "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

"It's funny because with Woody Allen, Milos Forman, those two masters, not only did I get to work with them, which is great, but I got to work with them in Spain, which is even better," he says.

But don't expect to see the increasingly laurelled actor strolling down the streets of Los Angeles anytime soon.

"I live in Spain, I've made my career there, and the exception is when I work out of Spain," says Bardem, who is currently in talks for more English-speaking roles but declines to name them in light of the writers' guild strike. "It's true that since a year and a half ago, most of the offers are coming from the outside, but I want to work no matter where the job is. All I want is to do my job as well as I can."

Caption: Boston Globe Nicolas guerin/corbis Richard foreman/miramaxDaniel daza/new line cinema

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NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (R) : Here comes another killer masterpiece (Miami Herald: Rodriguez)

No Country for Old Men (film) Advanced reading level Reading Level (Lexile): 1320L Citation format:

November 16, 2007 Miami Herald, The (FL) Edition: F1WK Page: G12 Author: RENE RODRIGUEZ, rrodriguez@MiamiHerald.com as provided by Knight-Ridder Digital

RENE RODRIGUEZ, rrodriguez@MiamiHerald.com. "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (R) : Here comes another killer masterpiece" Miami Herald, The (FL)2007-11-16: G12.School Library Collection By NewsbankOnline. Infoweb by Newsbank, Inc. December 23, 2007. With No Country for Old Men, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing) remind you why they deserve to be ranked among the forefront of American filmmakers. If they also happen to be among the most inconsistent, so be it. This tense, haunting, terrifying picture, which is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy (and is about as skillful as any book-to-movie adaptation I have ever seen), is a model of pitch and modulation and craft. For two hours, the Coens hold you in their grip so tightly that for long stretches it feels a little hard to breathe.

The Coens have always had a knack for thrillers. Their first movie, Blood Simple, simultaneously mocked and amplified film noir conventions to delirious heights, but they have never had as much seriousness of purpose as they do this time. No Country for Old Men is never heavy or portentous -- the movie is essentially one long, nerve-racking chase with an alarming body count -- but the film, like McCarthy's novel, treats death with uncommon seriousness. You can feel traces of the Coens' sly, smirking humor hovering at the edges of some scenes, but for most of its duration, this is a profoundly sad and melancholy movie. As one character puts it: "The crime you see now, it's hard to take its measure."

Set in 1980 West Texas, the story is pulp-fiction simple, hinging on three characters: Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a working-class Vietnam veteran who lives in a trailer park and makes the fateful decision to keep the $2 million he finds at the scene of a drug deal gone bad; Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), the near-supernatural killer on his trail, who will do anything to recover the stolen loot; and the world-weary Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who is trying to find Moss before Chigurh does, because he knows that encounter can only lead to one possible outcome.

The three roles, and the way the actors play them, could not be more different. Bardem, sporting a haircut that would be ridiculous if the man wearing it wasn't so terrifying, turns Chigurh into a veritable angel of death, with a smile that gives the term "humorless" new dimensions and a habit of flipping a coin to decide whether to kill people he happens to meet.

Brolin makes the increasingly desperate Moss resourceful and human. He's the closest thing the story has to a hero, and even if the character doesn't always make the wisest choices, you care deeply for his safety.

Jones has the trickiest part of all, since the sheriff's main role is to serve as Greek chorus (complete with voiceover narration) to the tragedy spiraling out of control before us. The Coens have left huge chunks of McCarthy's prose intact in the film, and it's hard to think of an actor other than Jones who could not only do it justice but also make it resonate on screen as deeply as it did on the page.

And resonate it does. No Country for Old Men has several sequences that permanently sear themselves into our collective movie memories, such as Llewelyn's river encounter with a mean dog chasing him with the relentlessness of fate, or a long sequence in which Llewelyn is holed up inside a motel room, aware that Chigurh is lurking outside the door, preparing to barge in (but how will he do it?)

What makes the movie a masterpiece, however, is not the Coens' supreme command of their craft in these scenes, but their willingness to embrace the resigned (some will say nihilistic) worldview of McCarthy's novel, right down to its anti-climactic ending, which doesn't provide the catharsis the audience craves, but instead makes them reflect on what they've seen. "Can't stop what's coming," another character says. But the movie makes you feel like that all-pervading, merciless darkness has already arrived.

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Tess Harper.

Writer-directors: Joel and Ethan Coen. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.

Producers: Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen.

A Miramax Films release. Running time: 123 minutes. Vulgar language, violence, gore, adult themes. Playing at area theaters.

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Reviews

A River Runs Through It.(Movies)(No Country for Old Men)(Movie review) McMurtry, Larry.

What a Country! (No Country for Old Men )(Movie review) (Corliss, Richard)

Coens of Silence (No Country for Old Men)(Movie review) (Schwarzbaum, Lisa)

Savvy sibs' creative strategy pays off.(FILM) (Thompson, Anne)

No Country for Old Men (Movie review) (Variety: Todd McCarthy)

FILM REVIEW: 'No Country for Old Men' touches perfection; Kevin Koczwara

Aging sheriff trails a man who lives to kill (Mick LaSalle)

He Found a Bundle of Money, And Now There's Hell to Pay (NY Times: AO Scott)

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (R) : Here comes another killer masterpiece (Miami Herald: Rodriguez)

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