Merrick here...

...with a look at the Coen Brothers' , sent in by The Beef. The film releases November 9.

Earlier this week, Massawyrm said the film pisses him off. The Beef doesn't seem to agree.

Read on...


Here's The Beef!

You've probably had more than enough of these already, but just in case you can't hear a satisfactory amount of praise about The Coens' new cinematic gift to humanity I figured I should help you on your search for an abundance of cheers for an incredibly praise-worthy piece of work.

If you need to know the story, Josh Brolin walks in to the aftermath of a drug deal gone terribly sour. He finds a couple of vehicles, and the carcasses of a couple of mexicans and a pit bull. Also, in the vicinity he locates another body leaning against a tree, and a briefcase stocked with thousands of fresh cut one-hundred dollar bills. He takes the bag, and thus becomes the primary target to a group of Mexican drug dealers, and the closest thing that man can produce to The Grim Reaper, Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh.
There isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said, over and over again. By this point, everyone anticipates Javier Bardem to be the baddest sonofabitch/motherfucker to ever set foot in front of a rolling camera. Which everyone should, because he is.

Bardem's Anton Chigurh is the epitome of pure screen terror. A man with intelligence, wit, resourcefulness, a carefree nature, and worst of all, a conscience the size of a crumb to create the most beautifully crafted killer that the world will hope never exists.

He's a beast of a man. He's the Atticus Finch for bad people. He can be simultaneously right on your heels, and yet be a step ahead of you. He is what the Coens described the Randall "Tex" Cobb character as in RAISING ARIZONA. The man is the Angel of Death, with an air gun and a 70s haircut. And, what's most terrifying about him is that he seemingly views a human in the same light that a giant would view an ant. It's as if he's on another plane of existence, and we're not allowed to share his space.
You're not likely to find someone to accurately relate to you the sheer level of shit-your-pantsedness that you'd have if you ever met someone like Chigurh. The Terminator would probably shit himself, that's the best I can come up with. You simply have to see it, and experience it like everyone else that's seen it. You can't be told about it, and comprehend it. The character goes beyond describability, and Bardem somehow makes this nightmare of a human being seem one-hundred percent real. I doubt you'll ever see a performance this incredibly confident in its subtlety to portray pure evil again. Bardem is perfect. He is more perfect in this than anyone can be at anything. Jimi Hendrix can't play the guitar like Javier Bardem can portray a natural born killer.

Now, what you're probably going to hear less about is the performance of Josh Brolin, and the only reason why is because he has the misfortune of being the protaganist to the greatest antagonist of recent memory. The man is damn near everything that he needs to be in order to overcome the killing mastermind that's on his tail. He's a man trying to outdo the outdo-able, but he convinces you through his confidence, know-how, and calm in dire situations that he may just be able to pull off what looks to be impossible. He earns every bit of breath that he takes in from the moment that he grabs the bag of cash, all on his own. If Bardem is the most frightening villain in recent memory, Brolin is right up there with the most admirable of heroes in recent memory. He's just as confident in his ability to be victorious as Chigurh is in his. But, he falls just short of reaching that same platitude of superiority over everyone else. He is the Hercules to Bardem's Zeus, and though he may fight bravely, plan intelligently, and gain your belief that he can walk away the victor, he's still up against the king of the gods.

If performance was everything then this movie would be head and shoulders above nearly everything else I've seen all year from an ensemble standpoint. It isn't just Bardem and Brolin (that sounds like some kind of accounting conglomerate or something...). Tommy Lee Jones steps up to the plate as the town sherrif and consistently puts up some of the best scenes in the film, with some of the more comedic moments coming out of his onscreen time with his younger deputy. Their chemistry together is impeccably funny, similar to that of an Andy Griffith / Barney Fife relationship, only with a lot more sarcasm and a lot less wacky faces.

Also throwing their two cents into the mix are Woody Harrelson as the Chigurh expert (sort of like Dr. Loomis but replace the PHD with a license to kill and a drawl), and Kelly Macdonald as Brolin's adoring wife. Their contributions are vital to the overall experience, as we learn quite a deal about the personality of Bardem's character from Harrelson, and not just in heresay but also through their brief interaction, and Macdonald's character is the heart and soul of our emotional focus on rooting for Brolin to succeed. There's one main thing that separates Brolin's character from Chigurh, and that's Brolin's motivation to fight not for himself, but for the future of his wife. And we want her to have that future.

I have reservations of saying that the Coens are now "back to form", because I don't think they completely ever got out of form. We're still only 7 years into this new millenium and I think O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU and THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE are still two of the best American pictures made since 2000. INTOLERABLE CRUELTY and THE LADYKILLERS may not be on that level, but they're still interesting, at least moderately amusing, and looked as if they were crafted with same amount of detail and effort that they put in to their greatest works, such is the same for their 90s "misstep" THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. But, for those that insist on saying that the Coen's have lost their magic, this film should convince you that they're still in the upper echelon of working filmmakers. Their craft from a technical, visual, and literary standpoint is as evident here as it was twenty years ago, If not more so. The dry and dirty scenery of the South has never looked so good as it does here, and the Coens continue to have the best taste in sheer picture composition. Each scene of this film looks as if it couldn't have been acted, staged, lit, and shot any better than it was.

They brought noir elements to a story that takes place in West Texas, and brought them hard, and pulled it off to make the best American crime thriller since their last crime thriller. It doesn't get much more impressive than this.

The Beef