“No Country for Old Men”

There are many characters in “No Country for Old Men.” Among the most potent is the State of Texas.

This is an intense movie about evil. It is unrelenting. It grinds away at the viewer as evil grinds away at good men. It is a story of struggle, much death, and no reward.

The Devil himself may walk the streets, obeying a code of morality that finds no value in humanity, that finds threads of causation leading to death as meaningful as those leading to any individual.

The angels are tired, and ready to retire. The world has changed, Texas has changed, there are too many drugs and there is too much money and there a man’s courage, even his goodness, is simply not enough. There is no salvation.

No one could have made this film from the Cormack McCarthy book besides the Cohn brothers, Joel and Ethan. Think “Fargo.” But worse. Or better, depending on how you feel about their work.

There are many outstanding performances in this film. The weariness of Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Tom Bell makes your bones ache. Javier Bardhem is soulless as Anton Chigurh, a satanic figure who, under McCarthy’s pen and the Cohn brother’s craft, refutes the idea that evil is randomly uncaring but actually targets the good.

Josh Brolin, as protagonist Llewelyn Moss (hero is the wrong word, wrong concept) gives much false hope for an ending in which we could find comfort. Woody Harrelson does his typical work as a bad man we could like, but is insufficient, both in the role and as the character he plays.

There is randomness in this film, call it heads or tails, but within that there is the intent to destroy and there are no scales to bring balance between a good act and an evil one.

Listen to the dialogue. Listen to McCarthy’s words spoken by Jones, by Ellis (Barry Corbin). Those words tell a tale of desperation, of futility, of nobility ground into dust by the Devil himself acting on a people who have lost both the ability to believe and reason to fear.

And look at Texas. It is the stage for this malevolent drama, and no place could have provided a better backdrop. Empty highways, cheap motels, sour coffee in dirty diners.

This is a film, like “The Departed,” that makes no apology, pulls no punch. It is harsh. It is also outstanding art. It is a phenomenally good movie at a time when we need good films.

When the lights came up in the theater, the woman in the row in front of me was incredulous, unsettled. “That’s it?” she asked.

“You wanted more?” I replied, exhausted after slightly more than two hours of mayhem and death. “I actually had quite enough.”

“But I wanted a different ending. I want some closure,” she lamented.

It’s not there. Not in the film, and not in the script, maybe not for any of us.

Go see “No country for Old Men.” Expect to be moved, not entertained.

The banking windmills

Bank of America sent me a wonderful offer the other day. I am sure you've gotten one too.

A low rate loan (9.99%) to CleanSweep® my debt. No collateral. No application fee. No annual fee. Up to $50 grand.

Oh, there's some fine print, of course. The rate is actually between 9.99% and 22.99%. I may be prohibited from using the loan to pay down debt if their company is profiting from my overdue balances. And that low, low rate that they say is "not a variable rate tied to an index..." is actually a rate they can vary "at our discretion."

Makes me want to just bend over and say "please."

The Oregon legislature regulated "payday" loan companies last session. And there are many noises coming from Congress and politicos that something has to be done to "fix" the mortgage crisis. But folks, if they really wanted to address the credit mess, they would start right there, with that little piece of plastic in your wallet.

Default rates of 27.99% used to be the province of crime lord vigorish. "Important account information enclosed" is printed on envelopes when what they are trying to do is help you dig yourself deeper into debt, get a little behind, so they can milk you like a cash cow. They flood your mailbox with these, so when the bill does actually does arrive, it gets tossed with the other junk it so looks like.

Now that the banks issuing these cards have had their puppets in Congress make bankruptcy so difficult, we need a crusader from the left, or the right, it does not matter since this is a bipartisan issue with plenty of moral authority from anyone's ideology, to get these blood suckers off our back. At least get their teeth out of our neck.

Give people a reasonable interest rate. Regulate bank card communications, how they represent their products. Allow people a chance to address their debt without incurring more debt at a higher rate.

We have laws that govern our banks, and we are going to have a few more that govern our mortgages. Misleading representations are prohibited in other banking.

It is time that we regulate in some way what has become the fuzzy concept of our money.

Charlie Wilson’s War

In our world, unintended consequences often define the course of history, yet good intentions can still prevail. “Charlie Wilson’s War” is about this world.

It’s a fine film, in many ways an important film, based on the true and unlikely story of how we “won” the war in Afghanistan.

Charlie Wilson was a hard drinking, womanizing congressman from Texas who may have been more important to the defeat of the Soviet Empire than Ronald Reagan. Wilson funded weapons for tribesmen of Afghanistan who were then able to defeat the mighty Soviet army, causing the Soviet retreat and possibly leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Director Mike Nichols’ resumé goes back to “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf” and “The Graduate” of the 1960s and extends to the more recent “The Birdcage” and the disturbing “Closer” of 2004.

Nichols shapes the film brilliantly. He urges the movie right along, propelled by the series of unlikely events it describes. And the events are true, chronicled in the book “Charlie Wilson’s War” by George Crile that describes the remarkable story of how “Charlie did it,” defeating the Soviets from his chair in an appropriations committee and meetings in Israel, Egypt and Pakistan.

The primary cast delivers well, with Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman comfortable in roles that are true in feel to the book.

The profane script was written by Aaron Sorkin, writer of “West Wing” and “Sports Night.” If you follow Sorkin, you will recognize his work: smart, fast and funny.

One review warns potential viewers that the movie contains drug use, drinking, smoking, nudity and strong profanity. True. All true. It was the 80s.

The film also captures why the war in Afghanistan was probably a battle, not a war, for democracy. The war for democracy is never over, and we are fighting other battles today because we failed to see that one through.

When we left Afghanistan, after filling the country with guns and after training its already ferocious people as fighters, we just left.

We left behind guns, we left behind a country torn by war, we left behind poor teenagers expected to fight like men, we left behind mines masked as toys designed to maim children, we left behind tribes with centuries of hatred and no means to resolve conflict, we left behind Muslims who had come from around the world to fight, including Osama bin Laden.

We did not build schools or hospitals or power plants or sewage plants or roads, or courts or democracy. We just left. Possibly nothing would have prevented the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan. But we did not try, we were done, we just left. This may have been amoral, it was definitely shortsighted.

But that is our history in the region, our “can do, mission accomplished,” history. Unfortunately, history has a longer point of view, and will return again and again the phrase, “We’ll see,” when the obvious conclusion is also too easy, a Zen parable, “We’ll see.”

Caveat: This writer is biased: having traveled in Afghanistan and Pakistan five years before the Soviets invaded in 1979, I closely followed the war in whatever news media offered coverage at the time. Yet not until I read Criles’ book did I understand the essential story of how the war played at the highest level of our government, and that of Pakistan.

“Charlie Wilson’s War” is a wonderful film, if you are interested. And you should be. It is important, because it describes why we have today soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.