No Country for Old Men.

Let me say right off the bat, this is a violent movie. If you can't take violence and can't get past it, this is not the movie for you. Which is a shame, because there are some very fine performances in this movie and it's worth it to see them. Josh Brolin (who is having a pretty good year and is terrific in this movie) comes across the aftermath of a shootout. Almost everyone is dead-but one man is still alive, barely. Josh looks around, doesn't see much...until he sees a case. A case full of money. He takes it, and thus his troubles begin. Javier Bardem is sent after him to recover the money and it's not pretty. We already know Javier is a killer (strangling a Sheriff's deputy on the floor of the police station proved that) and that he has one of the worst haircuts ever put on film. He's also one the scariest character's ever put on film and he leaves a trail of bodies behind him in his quest for the money. josh, for all his smarts (and he turns out to be much smarter than Javier bargained on) is still no match for someone willing to kill everyone in his way and even someone who wasn't, just because he promised he would. Tommy lee Jones is the Sheriff who is baffled about all the murders popping up in his jurisdiction-and while he gives a fine performance (I'm not sure anyone does bemusement better than Tommy Lee Jones), but to me, this character was the weak link in the story. He's never seen so many murders, he's never seen so many drugs...blah blah blah. I understood the character (and he's pretty much the title) but still, it baffled me. Do you not go into law enforcement knowing really bad stuff may happen? And is this part of the "things were better in the old days" thing? Because they weren't. The world has ALWAYS been a violent place-and until the past 100 years or so there were no real police forces to stop the bad guys. My mother told me a story once about her step-mother, who grew up on a farm in Alabama in the early 1900's. It was way out in the country-about as bucolic as it could be...and she always answered the door with a gun in her apron pocket because she never knew who was going to be at the door. A gun. Because she was scared-in a time we think of as being calm-and it wasn't.

I will say I saw the preview for There Will Be Blood and it scared the bejesus out of me. Daniel Day Lewis looked deeply frightening and no one you would want to run into, ever. He and Javier may have to fight it out for scariest character in a movie this year.