The movie opens with Tommy Lee Jones narrating. He tells a very long story about being a law man over some very good shots of what is probably Texas, but since this is a movie they probably had to fly all the way to Sweden or something. (I do not care enough to google it. It really probably is Texas. Or Arizona. It’s a desert of some sort.) I love these opening shots and immediately the movie had my attention. I was determined to like it just based on these:
They introduce the “bad guy” right off. For the longest he doesn’t have a name, so I just thought of him as “chili bowl” (based on his haircut) and by the time they gave us his name, chili bowl was already cemented in my brain. His real name is Anton Chigurh (pronounced sugar), and he’s a killer, a good one, and also a bit of magician, which is one of the problems I had with the movie. I’ll get into that later. Chili bowl likes to kill people with a “captive bolt pistol”, that makes a wonderful sound when it goes off, which you will hear many many times throughout the movie. They LOVE to punctuate silent, suspenseful scenes with loud noises. It gets tedious after awhile. Oh, and the captive bolt pistol (by the way, I cheated and wiki’d the movie just so I’d know what that was called) is also very handy at blowing out lock cylinders. Chili bowl is totally insane, which they decide to demonstrate right off with the patented “crazy eyes” technique:
So basically the story is a guy (Llewellyn Moss) played by Josh Brolin stumbles upon a drug deal gone WAY wrong in the desert. He finds some money, takes some of the dead Mexicans’ guns, and goes home and the rest of the movie happens.
Here’s what I hated: in the beginning Llew is hunted by chili bowl and the other Mexicans. (note: chili bowl works for one dude, the Mexicans represent the other side). They find him pretty easily, but you’re given a really good reason for that—a transmitter in the money. However, when Llew finds the transmitter and takes it out, chili bowl is still able to find him. So is Woody Harrelson, (works on chili bowl’s side, but they’re not exactly teammates.) That jump from psychotic bad guy to psychic bad guy was weird. Stopped the whole flow of the movie for me, because I just kept wondering how chili bowl knew where Llew went. Also, when Llew finds the transmitter, he IMMEDIATELY starts to get paranoid about being followed. He’s sitting in his hotel room, in the dark, holding his gun, when this happens:
Total cliché scary movie moment. Again, I was taken out of the movie to ponder how perfect it was that 5 minutes after Llew finds the transmitter a creepy silhouette stops outside his door. AND THEN!! 10 minutes of silence-filled scenes of the door, Llew, the gun, the door, the gun, and then Llew again ends with the aforementioned air gun thing blowing the lock off the door, resulting in a nice jump and little shriek from myself. THANKS, COEN BROS. THANKS FOR THE FREE HEART ATTACK. AGAIN.
Llew escapes to Mexico, only to be found not only by chili bowl, but also Woody. I still can’t figure out how both of them knew he’d go to Mexico. I have GOT to read that damn book.
OH and funniest scene in the entire movie goes to Beth Grant, who plays Llew’s mother-in-law. The actress herself has a nice twangy southern accent, and she’s playing this spunky old bitch and I just love it.
“I always seen this is what it’d come do. Three years ago I previsioned it. Three years ago I said them very words—‘no’ and ‘good”. Here we are, 90 degree heat, I got the cancer, and look at this….not even a home to go to. We’re goin’ to El Paso, Texas. Do you know how many people I know in El Paso, Texas?”
"That's how many."
Llew’s wife had the cherry role in this movie: the only actor in the entire film to be in scenes with all 3 main players: Llew, chili bowl, and Tommy Lee. Her last scene is my favorite—it’s with chili bowl. It’s a REALLY good scene.
All I’ll say about the ending is that it wasn’t what I expected, but knowing the formula for every movie isn’t fun anyway. Being surprised was good.
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