The Coen Brothers return with the thriller No Country for Old Men, starring Javier Bardem as a psycho killer, Tommy Lee Jones as a saintly sheriff, and Josh Brolin as a man on the run. A look back at the Coens' best movie moments.
There are weak men (William H. Macy as a car salesman in hock), mean men (Macy’s boss and father-in-law) and evil men (Peter Stormare and Steve Buscemi as the thugs Macy hires to kidnap his wife so he can split the ransom his father-in-law will pay). There’s also one good, smart woman: Marge, the pregnant Minnesota cop played by Frances McDormand in an Oscar-winning performance.
Marge might get queasy watching Stormare grind Buscemi’s body in the wood-chipper, geysers of blood action-painting the snow as the victim’s white-socked foot sticks out of the machine (87-minute mark). But, almost uniquely in the Coen constellation, she’s ultimately a winner, who is, moreover, happy to wrap herself in her husband’s stolid devotion. Fargo is a favorite of critics and audiences, though for one or two holdouts the film has more attitude (mostly derisive) than cinematic or character aptitude.
Three cons (George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson) are on the lam in ’30s Mississippi. A blind prophet intones, “You shall see a cow on top of a cotton bale, and many other startlements.” Startlements are indeed in store: a one-eyed, toad-squishing salesman (John Goodman); three maidens washing their laundry in a stream; and the improbable stardom of the convicts as the ZZ Top-bearded, country-singin’ Foggy Bottom Boys (the popular tune “Man of Constant Sorrow” is found at the 85-minute mark).
This time the Coens raided not only Homer’s Odyssey but Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (for the movie’s title) and MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (for a delirious production number starring the Ku Klux Klan). Toss in a funny-sexy turn by Clooney (whose charisma, comic timing and self-deprecation are made for the Coens) and enough gorgeous bluegrass music to have made the movie’s CD a platinum-seller, and you have prime, picaresque entertainment. O Brother celebrates the chicanery of the human spirit, the love of raillery and rodomontade. But don’t ask us for reasons; we just liked it.
