“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.