If It Ain’t Fixed, Don’t Broke It

Where’d you get a gun like this? he said.
At the gittin place.
  Cormac McCarthy, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES (1992)

Where’d you get that pistol? she called.
At the gettin place.
  Cormac McCarthy, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2005)

The Popcorn Interlude: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Cormac McCarthy, a quality crime yarn and the Coen Brothers: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN should have been a perfect storm. It’s a marvellous movie, there’s no doubt about that, and that it’s not entirely wonderful is due in part to the curse of high expectations, and at least two, and possibly three, rather convoluted leaps of logic the filmmakers ask the audience to make – one is plenty, two is pushing it and three is just sloppy, which is not an adjective often used in the same paragraph as ‘the Coen Brothers’. In saying that, it will certainly reward a second viewing and it will deservedly be in most critics’ Top Ten come the end of the year. But here’s another way of getting at what we were trying to say here: the fact that NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a crime story will in no way influence the way its critics and its audience view the film. It will be judged on its production values, its direction and acting, how plausible and engaging its story is, how well it achieves its implicit ambition. If its narrative genre is mentioned at all it will be in a positive context, given the Coens’ superb understanding and execution of what makes crime a global obsession; the Coen Brothers are among the best in the business because they work in the crime genre, not despite it. The same could be said for Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, W.R. Burnett. It helps, of course, that the Coens work in what is still a relatively new form, one that doesn’t concern itself with high or low art but good or bad movies. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler: “There’s only two kinds of writing, good and bad.” The Coens understand that there’s only two kinds of stories, essential or not. It’s still too early to decide if NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is essential in the way FARGO and THE BIG LEBOWSKI are, but for the moment it is almost a perfect storm.- Declan Burke

Blood Is Never Simple

Ever since the news started filtering back from Cannes that the Coen Brothers were not only back on form, but with an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel, the elves have been fairly salivating at the prospect of No Country For Old Men. Due early next year, it’s a classic Coen set-up: guy finds a heap of money in desert, psychotic killer turns up to claim it, chaos ensues. The cast includes Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Woody Harrelson, but don’t expect the skewed black comedy of Fargo or The Big Lebowski: taking its cue from the pessimistic WB Yeats title, this baby’s dark, dark, dark, and very much a return to Blood Simple territory. McCarthy, the Coens, and a neo-noir classic-in-the-making? Truly our cup runneth over.