Toronto and NYFF preview. No Country For Old Men.

Now then: "There is a polished, poetic plainness to some of Cormac McCarthy's prose in which his admirers might hear echoes of Flannery O'Connor but which usually leaves me exasperated," begins Kenneth R Morefield at Looking Closer. He explains, and then: "One could, I think, rewrite the first two paragraphs of this review by crossing out 'Cormac McCarthy' and inserting 'the Coen brothers' and substituting Fargo (or O Brother, Where Art Thou) for No Country for Old Men." Goes on a bit more, and then: "Since I've no doubt offended the two groups most anxious to see the film, let me hasten to say it did work for me, if only just."

"No Country for Old Men is one of those movies I think provides a critical litmus test," proposes Jim Emerson. "You can quibble about it all you like, but if you don't get the artistry at work then, I submit, you don't get what movies are."

"The film is somber, austere, yet rich in feeling," writes David Edelstein in New York. "The Coens don't wink at you, but you know they're there and grooving on the barbed-wire witticisms and the actors' Weirdo Factor: [Tommy Lee] Jones's hangdog face; Woody Harrelson's doofus air of infallibility as a cowboy-hatted bounty hunter; and especially [Javier] Bardem's Prince Valiant haircut, basso-Lurch voice, and dark, freaky stare in the extended foreplay before his killings."

The "unsatisfyingly rapid narrative closure... may just be a sign that No Country is one of those totally involving stories that one just hates to see end," blogs the Austin Chronicle's Marjorie Baumgarten.

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes.

Posted by dwhudson at September 24, 2007 9:49 AM