'No Country for Old Men' is thrilling caper

11/28/07 - The Coen Brothers' ("Fargo," "The Big Lebowski") latest flick is a tense, unflinching odyssey across the American west. The film teems with shady dealings, seedy motel and murder. And, as an added bonus, it features one of the best psychopathic serial killers since Hannibal Lector.

"No Country For Old Men" takes the term "blood money" literally: A hunter finds a briefcase containing $2 million nestled among corpses and a truck full of heroin - clearly the remnants of a botched drug deal. The fallout, naturally, is violent.

The film is brutal, (killing sprees are rarely gentle affairs) but it's not without wit. "No Country" has a cold humor to it. Well-placed caricatures - from a frightened secretary at a trailer park, to a gang of stumbling men crossing the border from Mexico, to a racist mother-in-law who informs everyone she's "got the cancer"- lend a bit of absurd humor to an otherwise chilling plot.

The movie plays like a modern, (albeit extremely warped) version of a western: the good sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, a principled - if na've - old man, hunts down the steely psycho, Antonin Chigurh, a homicidal weirdo who totes a cattle stun-gun and is preoccupied with carrying out his own twisted version of "justice."

The main character, Llewelyn Moss, is neither good nor evil - he's an everyman who, after stumbling upon the suitcase, finds himself $2 million richer.

On the other hand he's being pursued by a ruthless, calculating, sociopath. But you can't have your cake and eat it too.

The plot snakes across Texas, as Moss, pursued by the creepy Chigurh, (whose haircut makes him look like a down-and-out actor at a Renaissance Fair) hides his suitcase full of money in a string of seedy motels. And, for a while, Moss manages to stay one step ahead, taking a few bullets but otherwise keeping his limbs intact.

The chase ends, inevitably, in violence. It's a blood-soaked fiasco complete with musing, on the part of Sheriff Bell, about just what's wrong with kids these days. (Answer: "They have green hair and bones through their noses.")

The actual ending leaves a lot to be desired, but the film itself is a breathtakingly executed thriller. The cinematography is brilliantly spare; everything from the desert landscapes to the cheap motels and trailer parks have a poetic starkness about them. The desert is expansive and vividly depicted - a clear contrast to the gas stations, diners and shoddy strip malls now populating the landscape.

But there's also a valuable lesson here.

The moral of the story is never take a suitcase full of money. It probably seems like a good idea at the time, (everybody likes money- especially when neatly arranged inside a nice leather briefcase). But taking a bunch of drug money never ends well. If anything, just grab a few stacks of cash and be on your way. Because otherwise you may end up being chased down by a psycho with a cattle stun gun. And, as it turns out, that's even less fun than it sounds.

If you like your movies murder-free and happily-ever-after, it's probably wise to skip this - the film is grisly and bloody and it makes the glitzy "American Gangster" look like a trip to Disney World.

But if you can get past spending two hours in the company of a deranged serial killer, "No Country" is definitely worth it.