journal features

movie review - No Country for Old Men

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2008.03.07

I really enjoyed this movie, though it was filled with psychopaths trying to kill each other. Set during the explosive early days of the growth of the drug trade in US, it starts with the discovery of a drug deal gone bad in the middle of nowhere. Present are a dozen bodies from two factions, and two parties who appear to have arrived after the blood-shed only to have been executed themselves. Or so the police discover come daylight. In the meantime, a hunter has also found the scene and discovered a big bag o' cash which he takes.

The rest of the hunter's nightmarish and short life begins when - still before the cops have arrived - he decides to go back to help a wounded man who lay dying in one of the vehicles on the scene. He'd originally left the man to die but decides (fatefully) to go back. This allows the biggest psychopath in the film to find him and start his pursuit.

The tone in this film is superb, the plot is harrowing, the characters compelling, and the dialog (for the most part) is convincing. I didn't find the compressed air canister to be a very effective conceit, but eh.

Strongly recommended.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton