I saw this and Blade Runner a few days apart. Interesting parallels in the stories, characters, and also some themes. Anton and Roy Batty are definitely both 'ultimate bad-asses'.
I can't see this at all. The replicants are a fairly literal allegory for rebelling slaves; therefore, even their immoral actions are cast against the larger immorality of their situation to begin with. Batty is relentless, in the way that you could say Chigurgh is, but Anton is a sociopath (one might say, an embodiment of evil), albeit one with a very specific personal code of behavior. Batty is acting out of necessity (evolve or die) but weighs his decisions in the moment (hence why he saves Deckard in the end).
for me the main similarities come from the labyrinthine nature of the plots and how the characters get caught up in detective games of cat and mouse, but come to find that other forces are at work in this game as well. this is why i referenced the borges story, "death and the compass." also, they're both moody and meditative, violent, lyrical, open-ended, etc.
Yeah... exactly what he said. Couldn't have put it much better. If you see them both very soon after each other you will see lots of similarities. It's in the narrative structure, the tone, the pacing, the violence etc. There was a lot more I had in mind right after seeing it (IE themes, perhaps not the overall themes of each) but it's all slipped from my mind now and I don't have time to dig it up again.
I haven't read that story but I'll check it out.
I agree w/ roots on Blood Simple. I like it, but I don't think it's on the same level as most of their other movies excluding the more recent ones where they were either trying something different (Intolerable Cruelty) or misfiring all together (The Ladykillers, Man Who Wasn't There). Of course I didn't see it when it first came out... might feel differently if I had.
The "Coen-esque" elements of NCFOM were almost distracting... the pan down to the man sleeping on his back, the headlights moving down the black top, and a few other stylistics things they've done before would temporarily take me out of the movie.
To make this thread really splintered - I always like comparing some director's first (real) movies... Blood Simple - Mean Streets - Reservoir Dogs - Hard Eight - Etc. They are all somewhat overreaching - overly stylistic (recklessly artistic?)- almost amateurish at times - yet those same weakness or lack of restraint ultimately make them memorable none the less. Except Hard Eight, I watched it again and it was just sorta bad.
just saw it yesterday. great movie. we would have rather seen llewelyn get popped, but maybe it was better this way. anton chigurh IS the ultimate baddass. that is all, carry on.
In the book, he uses both a shotgun w/ silencer as well as the cattle stun gun.
Also, he is an oportunist, who will use the best weapon at hand when needed.
Yeah, in the book, shotgun with some sort of homemade silencer (I wondered if that is even possible to have a shotgun silencer??!) but I give the author benefit of the doubt it is.
He had to have a rifle though at the hotel in Eagle Pass... Of course though when he gets hit by Moss and flees and drops his gun it looks like a smaller machine gun with a strap. That might be a continuity error of sorts (or something you aren't supposed to think about) unless he's a really good shot with that little gun.
total aside: where is dude supposed to be from? maybe it's mentioned in the book? bardem seems to tweak his native spanish accent, but still makes no attempt to sound American. he definitely has an accent.
In the book, he uses both a shotgun w/ silencer as well as the cattle stun gun.
Also, he is an oportunist, who will use the best weapon at hand when needed.
Yeah, in the book, shotgun with some sort of homemade silencer (I wondered if that is even possible to have a shotgun silencer??!)
I think it's possible to put a suppressor on a shotgun but it's not something you see everyday. And it probably wouldn't be as quiet as Anton's weapon is (but hey, that's Hollywood).
I just saw this last night. I thought it was outstanding.
I haven't read the whole thread but I wanted to give my take on the scene y'all were discussing when TLJ goes back to the hotel in El Paso. I don't think Chigurh was there at all. It was just a visual representation of TLJ's fear. He had also called him "a ghost" prior to that scene. That's my take.
I heard the toilet flush, too, but given every other scene where bystanders and innocents and safety are of no consequence to Anton, it did not make sense to me.
The park was still useful to him as an "quiet hunting ground" at that point and he didn't want to draw any more heat to it.
In the book, he uses both a shotgun w/ silencer as well as the cattle stun gun.
Also, he is an oportunist, who will use the best weapon at hand when needed.
I agree with the opportunist/survivalist aspect to him. Anton and Lewelyn have a lot of similarities. I'm sure that Anton was disappointed to not have killed him. Also, re: Anton's choice of weapons, my thoughts were that the air gun for cattle (a) caused less mess, (b) didn't leave him with ballistics to be traced back to him, and (c) was hella weird, like him.
As far as the large shot gun is concerned, I'm convinced that like Lewellyn, Anton was using double O shot instead of normal shot. Double O shot is like shooting ballbearings out of a barrel versus normal shot is like BBs. Double O shot is much more lethal. The only reason I know this is because the Oakland Police (aka the Blue Meanies) were ordered to use Double O shot in "dispersing" (more like dispensing) bystanders during the Berkeley People's Park protest in 1969. Also, I could be wrong, but I imagine ballistically, it's pretty hard to trace shot from a shotgun.
Like this quote:
???You can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity.??? ??? Barry Corbin, ???No Country for Old Men???
i'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the total lack of music throughout this film.
This was one of the biggest things I liked about the overall feel of the film. My girl and I saw this weekend, and her being a museum lady really saw the film overall as a great piece of art (speaking from a purely cinematographic point of view) and I have to agree with her.
The opening shots of the Texas landscape, and all the little sounds throughout that made it feel like you were actually a fly on the wall experiencing the events in real time with the characters. I especially loved the fade-out/fade-in where TLJ comes driving up on the hotel when the Mexicans are fleeing, and you hear the gunshots as almost like firecrakcers in the background before the truck comes skidding out the parking lot.
That said, where the money went is sorta ambiguous as it was never clearly shown if the money was really in the hotel room vent, or if Anton just looked there because that's where Llewelyn hid it last time (but he does give the kids money at the end for the shirt, so maybe he did find it? Also, he killed the main dude who was hiring everyone to find the money, so there was no one left to return it to.) I think it's been agreed upon that he killed wifey due to him checking his boots, and I think the accountant is also left intentionally open-ended as we don't hear his answer to Anton's question.
What I thought was funny at my viewing was the dude next to us who didn't like the ending because "some random people came out of nowhere and killed Llewelyn" I was like WTF?!?!? Were we even watching the same movie, or did you just ignore the fact that the Mexicans had been chasing him the entire time - they chased him even before anton got hired.
saw it a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed it. I agree with much of what has been already said. Brolin is terrific. Almost in Tender Mercies era Duval mode. The coen bros do such a great job of making place a distinctive voice, the plains are practically another character adding to the intimacy of the relationships.
I keep going back to the Nam aspect of the piece. It's been a good 20 years since Hollywood has explored that conflict and I'm not just talking about Platoon and Casualties of War but pictures where the Nam vets were coping with living in the Reagan 80s, films like Jacknife or more commonly TV series like Magnum PI. Only Dead Presidents and We were Soldiers come to mind right now. In a sense Iraq is the final reaction to our experience in Nam. Cheney and Rumsfeld were deeply affected by what they saw in the Ford white house and vowed never again to allow the power the presidency to be eroded or for public protest to alter a war in progress. I suspect were going to see an increase in Vietnam affected characters popping up in films.
Not sure if it has been posted already, but I read an article by the Coen's where they said they actually intended to cast James Brolin. But that the casting agent made a mistake and Josh Brolin showed up the first day of shooting and so they used him because the contracts were signed and everyone was ready to go.
In retrospect you can tell the role was really for someone older, but Josh Brolin really pulls it off well.
Not sure if it has been posted already, but I read an article by the Coen's where they said they actually intended to cast James Brolin. But that the casting agent made a mistake and Josh Brolin showed up the first day of shooting and so they used him because the contracts were signed and everyone was ready to go.
wow. whether Josh Brolin actually "worked" in the role or not, talk about a HUGE fuck up. I hope the casting agent responsible for that got fired.
When we drove home from the theater last night, nobody said anything the whole time. Stereo was off. Just silence. I wanted to sort out some of the openings in the story--especially the 'conclusion'--but nobody could manage to form words with their mouths. I think I mumbled "Damn" at some point, but that's it.
I was struck by many of the rather claustrophobic scenes in the hotel rooms. Especially as they contrasted with the vastness of the other scenery.
e.g., They way Javier shoots Harrelson in mid-conversation and then awkwardly nudges himself towards the ringing phone, puts it on his lap and then gently moves his feet up onto the bed--away from Harrelson's puddling blood as it flows towards him.
That kind of subtle poetry in the face complete contempt for human life really fucks with my head.
Not sure if it has been posted already, but I read an article by the Coen's where they said they actually intended to cast James Brolin. But that the casting agent made a mistake and Josh Brolin showed up the first day of shooting and so they used him because the contracts were signed and everyone was ready to go.
wow. whether Josh Brolin actually "worked" in the role or not, talk about a HUGE fuck up. I hope the casting agent responsible for that got fired.
Considering the Coen's track record in this department I would be amazed if this wasn't one of their customary wind up tales.
Not sure if it has been posted already, but I read an article by the Coen's where they said they actually intended to cast James Brolin. But that the casting agent made a mistake and Josh Brolin showed up the first day of shooting and so they used him because the contracts were signed and everyone was ready to go.
wow. whether Josh Brolin actually "worked" in the role or not, talk about a HUGE fuck up. I hope the casting agent responsible for that got fired.
Considering the Coen's track record in this department I would be amazed if this wasn't one of their customary wind up tales.
yeah the more I think about it the more certain I am that that story is complete bullshit. no way they "signed the contracts" and everything before realizing they had gotten the wrong guy.
Presumably, he leaves the accountant alive in the office building
I am stunned that you thought this ... it could not have been more plain that he was going to kill him, with the exchange "are you going to kill me?" " - it depends ... do you see me?" He was reveling in his own reputation at that point, and there is no doubt whatsoever that he kills him - even though the killing takes place offscreen, like many of the deaths in the film.
you're nuts! 'reveling in his own reputation'??? "do you see me" = if he says "no, you were never here" he gets to live.
I agree. Without the final scene, we would have to surmise that he did kill the accountant, but in the final scene he tells the boys that they didn't see him, then lets them live.
Didn't see me=save that quarter???that's your lucky quarter.
Presumably, he leaves the accountant alive in the office building
I am stunned that you thought this ... it could not have been more plain that he was going to kill him, with the exchange "are you going to kill me?" " - it depends ... do you see me?" He was reveling in his own reputation at that point, and there is no doubt whatsoever that he kills him - even though the killing takes place offscreen, like many of the deaths in the film.
you're nuts! 'reveling in his own reputation'??? "do you see me" = if he says "no, you were never here" he gets to live.
I agree. Without the final scene, we would have to surmise that he did kill the accountant, but in the final scene he tells the boys that they didn't see him, then lets them live.
Didn't see me=save that quarter???that's your lucky quarter.
lol - I love how differently we are all seeing this.
I never thought the boys were in danger of being killed. His asking the boys not to say they saw him walk away from the accident in the middle of a neighbourhood is not really the same as shooting a dude in an private office and then saying to the witness that his survival depends on whether or not he was visible - all the while smiling that killing smile. It's all down to subtleties and how each of us see Anton.
an interview with Josh Brolin from Now Magazine. Not in this interview but, they were talking to Heath Ledger to play Moss, but he pulled out. ____________________________________________________
Lucky breaks. Like most actors not named Brando, Josh Brolin has seen his career defined by them. Never so literally, though, as when his motorcycle T-boned a car and threw him over the hood at 35 miles an hour. Collar bone, meet pavement. Snap! Crackle! Pop!
It was just two days before this accident that he was cast in No Country For Old Men, the latest from Joel and Ethan Coen, who never wanted the 39-year-old in the first place. They'd already cast Tommy Lee Jones in another role and wanted somebody of similarly sturdy character, older, rougher around the edges, beaten down by life.
Nick Nolte maybe. Hell, they'd have settled for Brolin's dad, James.
But somehow he convinced them ??? more on that later ??? only to see the most important role of his life skid across the asphalt and come to rest beside the mangled heap of steel and chrome that used to be his bike.
"I'm flying over the car ??? and I'm really getting some air ??? and I remember thinking, 'Frickin' shit! I really wanted to work with the Coens,'" Brolin says, grinning.
To keep the part ??? "It was a good fuckin' part," Brolin says ??? he kept his busted shoulder a secret. Never mind the doctors who wanted to operate; the shoot couldn't be delayed.
He toughed it out, chose to let the bones mend on their own. Two weeks later he was being stalked across west Texas by Javier Bardem's psychotic-yet-principled killer, who was, in turn being chased by Jones's small-town sheriff. The pain gave Brolin's performance the world-weary gravitas the Coens were seeking.
"I got lucky," says Brolin during the Toronto Film Festival. "My character gets shot in the shoulder early on, so I didn't have to act the hurt."
Of course, if the Coens had done a little digging, they would've realized Brolin is exactly the kind of laconic Marlboro Man type they were looking for in the first place. He races cars and surfs and rides horses. A real cowboy. And the role of Llewellyn Moss is nothing if not a cowboy.
No Country is a Cannes-certified return to the Coens' Fargo form after the disastrous Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. It's based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy, who writes spare, blunt prose about spare, blunt men who often look like Tommy Lee Jones and, yes, Josh Brolin.
While the set-up is a Hollywood clich??, and intentionally so ??? a cowboy, a killer, a conflicted cop and a sack of cash scratch a bloody trail across an inhospitable landscape ??? the execution is pure Coen brothers. Cruelly, comically violent, it's been dubbed an action-packed morality tale, a parched meditation on manhood and an oblique existentialist thriller.
Whatever it is, Brolin gives a breakout performance as the sun-toughened Moss, who stumbles across a bag full of drug money and decides to keep it. The Coens have called the role "the action centre of the film."
While he's continually being pursued by Bardem's ghostly nutbar with the Prince Valiant bob and Jones's sheriff, and much of the bloodshed happens around him, there's a sense that Moss is like a bottle of nitro rattling along in the back of an old buckboard. One wrong move will set him off.
"That's what's so great about those kinds of guys. The place where they let out whatever angst they hold in would be in a bar fight," says Brolin, sounding like he knows a thing or two about bar fights.
No Country has also been referred to as a western, yet it's set in 1980.
"What's western about it is this idea of sparse, tough terrain, laconic characters. I mean, when we talk about adding a line of dialogue for my character, it's like, should it be 'Mmmm' or should it be 'Hmmm'? Very Clint Eastwood," Brolin says. "And there's something very mythological in Javier's killer."
Javier's Chigurh is the kind of sick fuck who flips a coin Two-Face-style to decide people's fate, which means half the time he sends them to the sweet hereafter using an air-driven bolt gun used to kill cattle. Bardem calls Chigurh "the embodiment of violence," someone who "appears, creates horror, pain and misery and leaves."
"He feels like a messenger of fate, the grim reaper, very Biblical and shit," Brolin says.
As for Llewelyn Moss, it's perhaps the most challenging role in the film and easily the most challenging of Brolin's career. "Josh plays a passive character but he doesn't give a passive performance," says Bardem. "Which is remarkable."
"Llewelyn is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Chigurh," says Brolin. "His intentions are so pure and so kind of romantic. He's not rash and absolutely weighs out the consequences of his every action."
Brolin could be talking about himself.
He's seen his stock in Hollywood rise and fall several times, from his debut at 16 as one of the Goonies to playing an armpit-licking bisexual cop in Flirting With Disaster to a string of forgettable characters in forgettable films.
Preferring underemployment to acting in crap, he played the stock market to pay the bills (he's so serious about Wall Street he even co-created a website for investors) and sold his ranch.
It's paid off. He's having a Jude Law type of year (minus messing around with the nanny). In addition to No Country, he steals scenes from Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington as a corrupt cop in Ridley Scott's American Gangster, and he actually manages to draw attention away from Charlize Theron in Paul Haggis's In The Valley Of Elah (which also stars Tommy Lee Jones).
And he started the year off as a menacing doctor in Planet Terror, director Robert Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse.
But back to the Coens not wanting to hire him.
"They weren't interested in me," he says bluntly. "At all.
"Sam Shepherd, whom I'd done True West with in New York, gave me the book and said the Coens are doing a movie and they'll probably fuck it up, but you should take a look. I read it and was completely blown away. But the Coens wouldn't see me."
So Brolin asked Rodriguez to shoot his audition tape. Shot by Rodriguez and directed by Quentin Tarantino on a $950,000 digital camera, it has to be one of the most professional audition tapes ever made.
"The Coens looked at it and all they sa
id was, 'Who lit it?'" Brolin says with a chuckle. "Luckily my agent kept pestering them until they saw me, but they still turned me down. I had to audition again to convince them I was right for the part."
Not that Brolin, who could easily find work if he just wanted to work, minded jumping through hoops. "There's something nice about working for a part, about feeling like you deserve to be there," he says.
To prove the point, he's yet to pick his next project because he's at a career peak and needs to make smart choices. "The next couple of jobs will determine if I'm the real thing or if I've just had a nice moment."
Doesn't matter if those roles are in art films or blockbusters.
"Commercial films are just films that are seen by more people," he says before dropping into a Brando impression. "I only do independent film. I only do theatre. Yeah, whatever, dude."
Here is the story I read. I agree it could be a put on, but funny none the less.
No. 38: Josh Brolin, the Casting Mistake of the Year
To film Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers needed just the right star.
"Boo-boos," David Merrick called them -- those big-time show-business casting mistakes that are never widely publicized. Not errors of taste or tone, but flat-out boners. Robert Urich, for instance, was asked to play Spenser, the TV detective, because the show's producers had him confused with Robert Conrad. We had waltzed through eleven films before our own first misfire. Our movie version of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men had Tommy Lee Jones in place -- no mistake there -- as a crusty west-Texas sheriff on the trail of a bad man to be played by four-time-Goya-winning Spanish sex symbol Javier Bardem. And to round out the cast we hired -- we thought -- rugged everyman Jim Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, the aging Vietnam vet caught in the middle.
Well, there were some red faces on the set the first day of shooting when Jim Brolin's son Josh showed up to play the part. Crossed wires, misunderstanding -- who knows what kind of snafu -- had resulted in our casting office offering the part to an actor who was patently thirty years too young. Talk about a boo-boo. In retrospect, this explained William Morris agent Michael Cooper's surprise on hearing we wanted his client for the coveted role. Too late now, though -- the contracts were all signed.
Well, that's show business. You roll with the punches. You make it work. How could Josh Brolin plausibly be a Vietnam vet? Simple: set the story in 1980 instead of the present day. A quick huddle with production designer Jess Gonchor and, bingo, we're a period picture. An offer goes out to Shia LaBeouf to replace Tommy Lee Jones as Brolin's (now young) counterpart. Shia passes, okay, we stick with Tommy Lee, and we make the best of a big age difference. You make it work.
Turns out the Brolin kid is not bad. Still, Jim Brolin. It could have been great.
yeah, I agree the kids were never in danger of being killed, he had no reason to kill them, the kids saw him wronged, the kids didnt see Anton harm anybody, the other car ran the red light...Anton was a man of strict principles, hence why he killed Carla Jean...he said he would if Llewellen didnt give him the money, and he didnt give him the money, so he had to kill Carla Jean out of princple. I think, perhaps in the scene where Anton goes and shoots Stephen Root(cant remember his name) he should of taken out a coin and told the accoutant to call it, then cut to the next scene...but what do I know I aint a movie maker....
man, you gotta love movies that spark this much questioning and thinking days, even weeks after you have left the theater..a true sign of a great movie. Not many movies have done this to me in the last few years....
Well, there were some red faces on the set the first day of shooting when Jim Brolin's son Josh showed up to play the part. Crossed wires, misunderstanding -- who knows what kind of snafu -- had resulted in our casting office offering the part to an actor who was patently thirty years too young. Talk about a boo-boo. In retrospect, this explained William Morris agent Michael Cooper's surprise on hearing we wanted his client for the coveted role. Too late now, though -- the contracts were all signed.
let's assume the contract was already signed before the directors realized they had the wrong guy (TOTALLY implausible), the contract would still likely have been voidable once they realized the mistake.
anyway enough of that.
It's this [/b] I take issue with.
an actor who was patently thirty years too young.
really though? doesn't the movie take place in '79 or '80? the last US servicemen left Vietnam in '75. Brolin looks like he is AT LEAST 25 in the movie but more likely in his 30's. and assuming people as young as 18 were drafted to Vietnam...what's the age problem with the young Brolin?
in the book, it takes place in 'present times,' but the only reference to anything particularly dated is Harrleson's character Mobile phone. The vietnam vet aspect, and the fact that moss' wife is all of 19 in the book make me think it was always supposed to take place circa early 80s.
there are some fuck ups as far as the dating in the movie..mostly with the cars, I noticed some mid 80s cars in scenes, and a brand new "Carls jr" in one scene.....but yeah the movie is supposed to be in 1980..remember when Anton was at the gas station, and he said "this is a 1958 quarter, its been waiting 22 years..."
in the book, it takes place in 'present times,' but the only reference to anything particularly dated is Harrleson's character Mobile phone. The vietnam vet aspect, and the fact that moss' wife is all of 19 in the book make me think it was always supposed to take place circa early 80s.
no there is DEFINITETLY a reference to the date in there somewhere in the movie; I remember thinking it was '79 or '80. fuck though I can't remember when/how it came up.
Wow, I must have been in the wrong frame of mind or something, because I didn't love this so much..
It was filmed beautifully, and there was some really good acting, but overall I thought it got kind of silly. I was really into it for the first half or so, but that psycho killer drug dude was kind of a joke to me (nice haircut, though) , couldn't really take him seriously. Or maybe I wasn't supposed to? I dunno, weird.
Comments
I read it the other way.
But seriously, this isn't a huge point worth getting all uppity about. Accountant lives/dies doesn't really change Anton's character.
And no one's answered my question yet about what kind of weapon dude is rocking. This is far more important than the fate of a CPA.
Also, he is an oportunist, who will use the best weapon at hand when needed.
Yeah... exactly what he said. Couldn't have put it much better. If you see them both very soon after each other you will see lots of similarities. It's in the narrative structure, the tone, the pacing, the violence etc. There was a lot more I had in mind right after seeing it (IE themes, perhaps not the overall themes of each) but it's all slipped from my mind now and I don't have time to dig it up again.
I haven't read that story but I'll check it out.
I agree w/ roots on Blood Simple. I like it, but I don't think it's on the same level as most of their other movies excluding the more recent ones where they were either trying something different (Intolerable Cruelty) or misfiring all together (The Ladykillers, Man Who Wasn't There). Of course I didn't see it when it first came out... might feel differently if I had.
The "Coen-esque" elements of NCFOM were almost distracting... the pan down to the man sleeping on his back, the headlights moving down the black top, and a few other stylistics things they've done before would temporarily take me out of the movie.
To make this thread really splintered - I always like comparing some director's first (real) movies... Blood Simple - Mean Streets - Reservoir Dogs - Hard Eight - Etc. They are all somewhat overreaching - overly stylistic (recklessly artistic?)- almost amateurish at times - yet those same weakness or lack of restraint ultimately make them memorable none the less. Except Hard Eight, I watched it again and it was just sorta bad.
Yeah, in the book, shotgun with some sort of homemade silencer (I wondered if that is even possible to have a shotgun silencer??!) but I give the author benefit of the doubt it is.
He had to have a rifle though at the hotel in Eagle Pass... Of course though when he gets hit by Moss and flees and drops his gun it looks like a smaller machine gun with a strap. That might be a continuity error of sorts (or something you aren't supposed to think about) unless he's a really good shot with that little gun.
total aside: where is dude supposed to be from? maybe it's mentioned in the book? bardem seems to tweak his native spanish accent, but still makes no attempt to sound American. he definitely has an accent.
I think it's possible to put a suppressor on a shotgun but it's not something you see everyday. And it probably wouldn't be as quiet as Anton's weapon is (but hey, that's Hollywood).
I haven't read the whole thread but I wanted to give my take on the scene y'all were discussing when TLJ goes back to the hotel in El Paso. I don't think Chigurh was there at all. It was just a visual representation of TLJ's fear. He had also called him "a ghost" prior to that scene. That's my take.
The park was still useful to him as an "quiet hunting ground" at that point and he didn't want to draw any more heat to it.
I agree with the opportunist/survivalist aspect to him. Anton and Lewelyn have a lot of similarities. I'm sure that Anton was disappointed to not have killed him. Also, re: Anton's choice of weapons, my thoughts were that the air gun for cattle (a) caused less mess, (b) didn't leave him with ballistics to be traced back to him, and (c) was hella weird, like him.
As far as the large shot gun is concerned, I'm convinced that like Lewellyn, Anton was using double O shot instead of normal shot. Double O shot is like shooting ballbearings out of a barrel versus normal shot is like BBs. Double O shot is much more lethal. The only reason I know this is because the Oakland Police (aka the Blue Meanies) were ordered to use Double O shot in "dispersing" (more like dispensing) bystanders during the Berkeley People's Park protest in 1969. Also, I could be wrong, but I imagine ballistically, it's pretty hard to trace shot from a shotgun.
Like this quote:
???You can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waitin' on you. That's vanity.??? ??? Barry Corbin, ???No Country for Old Men???
This was one of the biggest things I liked about the overall feel of the film. My girl and I saw this weekend, and her being a museum lady really saw the film overall as a great piece of art (speaking from a purely cinematographic point of view) and I have to agree with her.
The opening shots of the Texas landscape, and all the little sounds throughout that made it feel like you were actually a fly on the wall experiencing the events in real time with the characters. I especially loved the fade-out/fade-in where TLJ comes driving up on the hotel when the Mexicans are fleeing, and you hear the gunshots as almost like firecrakcers in the background before the truck comes skidding out the parking lot.
That said, where the money went is sorta ambiguous as it was never clearly shown if the money was really in the hotel room vent, or if Anton just looked there because that's where Llewelyn hid it last time (but he does give the kids money at the end for the shirt, so maybe he did find it? Also, he killed the main dude who was hiring everyone to find the money, so there was no one left to return it to.) I think it's been agreed upon that he killed wifey due to him checking his boots, and I think the accountant is also left intentionally open-ended as we don't hear his answer to Anton's question.
What I thought was funny at my viewing was the dude next to us who didn't like the ending because "some random people came out of nowhere and killed Llewelyn" I was like WTF?!?!? Were we even watching the same movie, or did you just ignore the fact that the Mexicans had been chasing him the entire time - they chased him even before anton got hired.
I keep going back to the Nam aspect of the piece. It's been a good 20 years since Hollywood has explored that conflict and I'm not just talking about Platoon and Casualties of War but pictures where the Nam vets were coping with living in the Reagan 80s, films like Jacknife or more commonly TV series like Magnum PI. Only Dead Presidents and We were Soldiers come to mind right now. In a sense Iraq is the final reaction to our experience in Nam. Cheney and Rumsfeld were deeply affected by what they saw in the Ford white house and vowed never again to allow the power the presidency to be eroded or for public protest to alter a war in progress. I suspect were going to see an increase in Vietnam affected characters popping up in films.
Did anyone see Rescue Dawn?
In retrospect you can tell the role was really for someone older, but Josh Brolin really pulls it off well.
wow. whether Josh Brolin actually "worked" in the role or not, talk about a HUGE fuck up. I hope the casting agent responsible for that got fired.
When we drove home from the theater last night, nobody said anything the whole time. Stereo was off. Just silence. I wanted to sort out some of the openings in the story--especially the 'conclusion'--but nobody could manage to form words with their mouths. I think I mumbled "Damn" at some point, but that's it.
Best film in the past 5 years.
e.g., They way Javier shoots Harrelson in mid-conversation and then awkwardly nudges himself towards the ringing phone, puts it on his lap and then gently moves his feet up onto the bed--away from Harrelson's puddling blood as it flows towards him.
That kind of subtle poetry in the face complete contempt for human life really fucks with my head.
Considering the Coen's track record in this department I would be amazed if this wasn't one of their customary wind up tales.
yeah the more I think about it the more certain I am that that story is complete bullshit. no way they "signed the contracts" and everything before realizing they had gotten the wrong guy.
I agree. Without the final scene, we would have to surmise that he did kill the accountant, but in the final scene he tells the boys that they didn't see him, then lets them live.
Didn't see me=save that quarter???that's your lucky quarter.
lol - I love how differently we are all seeing this.
I never thought the boys were in danger of being killed. His asking the boys not to say they saw him walk away from the accident in the middle of a neighbourhood is not really the same as shooting a dude in an private office and then saying to the witness that his survival depends on whether or not he was visible - all the while smiling that killing smile.
It's all down to subtleties and how each of us see Anton.
an interview with Josh Brolin from Now Magazine. Not in this interview but, they were talking to Heath Ledger to play Moss, but he pulled out.
____________________________________________________
Lucky breaks. Like most actors not named Brando, Josh Brolin has seen his career defined by them. Never so literally, though, as when his motorcycle T-boned a car and threw him over the hood at 35 miles an hour. Collar bone, meet pavement. Snap! Crackle! Pop!
It was just two days before this accident that he was cast in No Country For Old Men, the latest from Joel and Ethan Coen, who never wanted the 39-year-old in the first place. They'd already cast Tommy Lee Jones in another role and wanted somebody of similarly sturdy character, older, rougher around the edges, beaten down by life.
Nick Nolte maybe. Hell, they'd have settled for Brolin's dad, James.
But somehow he convinced them ??? more on that later ??? only to see the most important role of his life skid across the asphalt and come to rest beside the mangled heap of steel and chrome that used to be his bike.
"I'm flying over the car ??? and I'm really getting some air ??? and I remember thinking, 'Frickin' shit! I really wanted to work with the Coens,'" Brolin says, grinning.
To keep the part ??? "It was a good fuckin' part," Brolin says ??? he kept his busted shoulder a secret. Never mind the doctors who wanted to operate; the shoot couldn't be delayed.
He toughed it out, chose to let the bones mend on their own. Two weeks later he was being stalked across west Texas by Javier Bardem's psychotic-yet-principled killer, who was, in turn being chased by Jones's small-town sheriff. The pain gave Brolin's performance the world-weary gravitas the Coens were seeking.
"I got lucky," says Brolin during the Toronto Film Festival. "My character gets shot in the shoulder early on, so I didn't have to act the hurt."
Of course, if the Coens had done a little digging, they would've realized Brolin is exactly the kind of laconic Marlboro Man type they were looking for in the first place. He races cars and surfs and rides horses. A real cowboy. And the role of Llewellyn Moss is nothing if not a cowboy.
No Country is a Cannes-certified return to the Coens' Fargo form after the disastrous Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. It's based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy, who writes spare, blunt prose about spare, blunt men who often look like Tommy Lee Jones and, yes, Josh Brolin.
While the set-up is a Hollywood clich??, and intentionally so ??? a cowboy, a killer, a conflicted cop and a sack of cash scratch a bloody trail across an inhospitable landscape ??? the execution is pure Coen brothers. Cruelly, comically violent, it's been dubbed an action-packed morality tale, a parched meditation on manhood and an oblique existentialist thriller.
Whatever it is, Brolin gives a breakout performance as the sun-toughened Moss, who stumbles across a bag full of drug money and decides to keep it. The Coens have called the role "the action centre of the film."
While he's continually being pursued by Bardem's ghostly nutbar with the Prince Valiant bob and Jones's sheriff, and much of the bloodshed happens around him, there's a sense that Moss is like a bottle of nitro rattling along in the back of an old buckboard. One wrong move will set him off.
"That's what's so great about those kinds of guys. The place where they let out whatever angst they hold in would be in a bar fight," says Brolin, sounding like he knows a thing or two about bar fights.
No Country has also been referred to as a western, yet it's set in 1980.
"What's western about it is this idea of sparse, tough terrain, laconic characters. I mean, when we talk about adding a line of dialogue for my character, it's like, should it be 'Mmmm' or should it be 'Hmmm'? Very Clint Eastwood," Brolin says. "And there's something very mythological in Javier's killer."
Javier's Chigurh is the kind of sick fuck who flips a coin Two-Face-style to decide people's fate, which means half the time he sends them to the sweet hereafter using an air-driven bolt gun used to kill cattle. Bardem calls Chigurh "the embodiment of violence," someone who "appears, creates horror, pain and misery and leaves."
"He feels like a messenger of fate, the grim reaper, very Biblical and shit," Brolin says.
As for Llewelyn Moss, it's perhaps the most challenging role in the film and easily the most challenging of Brolin's career. "Josh plays a passive character but he doesn't give a passive performance," says Bardem. "Which is remarkable."
"Llewelyn is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Chigurh," says Brolin. "His intentions are so pure and so kind of romantic. He's not rash and absolutely weighs out the consequences of his every action."
Brolin could be talking about himself.
He's seen his stock in Hollywood rise and fall several times, from his debut at 16 as one of the Goonies to playing an armpit-licking bisexual cop in Flirting With Disaster to a string of forgettable characters in forgettable films.
Preferring underemployment to acting in crap, he played the stock market to pay the bills (he's so serious about Wall Street he even co-created a website for investors) and sold his ranch.
It's paid off. He's having a Jude Law type of year (minus messing around with the nanny). In addition to No Country, he steals scenes from Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington as a corrupt cop in Ridley Scott's American Gangster, and he actually manages to draw attention away from Charlize Theron in Paul Haggis's In The Valley Of Elah (which also stars Tommy Lee Jones).
And he started the year off as a menacing doctor in Planet Terror, director Robert Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse.
But back to the Coens not wanting to hire him.
"They weren't interested in me," he says bluntly. "At all.
"Sam Shepherd, whom I'd done True West with in New York, gave me the book and said the Coens are doing a movie and they'll probably fuck it up, but you should take a look. I read it and was completely blown away. But the Coens wouldn't see me."
So Brolin asked Rodriguez to shoot his audition tape. Shot by Rodriguez and directed by Quentin Tarantino on a $950,000 digital camera, it has to be one of the most professional audition tapes ever made.
"The Coens looked at it and all they sa id was, 'Who lit it?'" Brolin says with a chuckle. "Luckily my agent kept pestering them until they saw me, but they still turned me down. I had to audition again to convince them I was right for the part."
Not that Brolin, who could easily find work if he just wanted to work, minded jumping through hoops. "There's something nice about working for a part, about feeling like you deserve to be there," he says.
To prove the point, he's yet to pick his next project because he's at a career peak and needs to make smart choices. "The next couple of jobs will determine if I'm the real thing or if I've just had a nice moment."
Doesn't matter if those roles are in art films or blockbusters.
"Commercial films are just films that are seen by more people," he says before dropping into a Brando impression. "I only do independent film. I only do theatre. Yeah, whatever, dude."
No. 38: Josh Brolin, the Casting Mistake of the Year
To film Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers needed just the right star.
"Boo-boos," David Merrick called them -- those big-time show-business casting mistakes that are never widely publicized. Not errors of taste or tone, but flat-out boners. Robert Urich, for instance, was asked to play Spenser, the TV detective, because the show's producers had him confused with Robert Conrad. We had waltzed through eleven films before our own first misfire. Our movie version of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men had Tommy Lee Jones in place -- no mistake there -- as a crusty west-Texas sheriff on the trail of a bad man to be played by four-time-Goya-winning Spanish sex symbol Javier Bardem. And to round out the cast we hired -- we thought -- rugged everyman Jim Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, the aging Vietnam vet caught in the middle.
Well, there were some red faces on the set the first day of shooting when Jim Brolin's son Josh showed up to play the part. Crossed wires, misunderstanding -- who knows what kind of snafu -- had resulted in our casting office offering the part to an actor who was patently thirty years too young. Talk about a boo-boo. In retrospect, this explained William Morris agent Michael Cooper's surprise on hearing we wanted his client for the coveted role. Too late now, though -- the contracts were all signed.
Well, that's show business. You roll with the punches. You make it work. How could Josh Brolin plausibly be a Vietnam vet? Simple: set the story in 1980 instead of the present day. A quick huddle with production designer Jess Gonchor and, bingo, we're a period picture. An offer goes out to Shia LaBeouf to replace Tommy Lee Jones as Brolin's (now young) counterpart. Shia passes, okay, we stick with Tommy Lee, and we make the best of a big age difference. You make it work.
Turns out the Brolin kid is not bad. Still, Jim Brolin. It could have been great.
man, you gotta love movies that spark this much questioning and thinking days, even weeks after you have left the theater..a true sign of a great movie. Not many movies have done this to me in the last few years....
let's assume the contract was already signed before the directors realized they had the wrong guy (TOTALLY implausible), the contract would still likely have been voidable once they realized the mistake.
anyway enough of that.
It's this [/b] I take issue with.
an actor who was patently thirty years too young.
really though? doesn't the movie take place in '79 or '80? the last US servicemen left Vietnam in '75. Brolin looks like he is AT LEAST 25 in the movie but more likely in his 30's. and assuming people as young as 18 were drafted to Vietnam...what's the age problem with the young Brolin?
in the book, it takes place in 'present times,' but the only reference to anything particularly dated is Harrleson's character Mobile phone. The vietnam vet aspect, and the fact that moss' wife is all of 19 in the book make me think it was always supposed to take place circa early 80s.
no there is DEFINITETLY a reference to the date in there somewhere in the movie; I remember thinking it was '79 or '80. fuck though I can't remember when/how it came up.
YES that was it.
It was filmed beautifully, and there was some really good acting, but overall I thought it got kind of silly. I was really into it for the first half or so, but that psycho killer drug dude was kind of a joke to me (nice haircut, though) , couldn't really take him seriously. Or maybe I wasn't supposed to? I dunno, weird.
I guess I musy be really
STEP.THE.HELL.OFF.SON.
THIS FILM IS[/b] A VINDICATION OF BOWL CUTS.
Says the dude who bears an uncanny resemblance to late-60s Sterling Morrison.