FIRST PARA
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
DIRECTORS: ETHAN AND JOEL COEN
RATING: 
For those among us who feared that the Coen brothers had left the reservation for good after the lacklustre efforts of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, No Country For Old Men comes as a robust reminder of their worth. This edge-of-your-seat chase thriller is not just a return to form, but a wicked throwback to the brothers' debut, the pitch black noir Blood Simple. It excites and disturbs in the same way, its literal and moral bloodbaths leaving an icky stain on the memory.
Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men is set in 1980 in the Texas borderlands and is a melancholy reflection on the way in which drug crime brought a surge in violence to the frontier country. Plot-wise, this manifests itself as a classic cat-and-mouse chase between men representing different shades of good and evil.
While hunting in the desert, Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) comes across a motorcade full of dead men, a stash of drugs and a bag full of cash. Though no crook, he takes the cash instinctively; though no fool, he has no idea what he is unleashing.
Appointed to track him down and retrieve the money is the mysterious and deadly Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a psychopath who wouldn't think twice about killing an old lady in the street if she dirtied his boot. Chigurh's weapon of choice is a cattle stun gun, which says a lot about how warped he is - as does his occasional inclination to allow potential victims to decide their fate by the toss of a coin. In one such scene, an elderly petrol station attendant innocently inquires what he has to gain by a coin toss. "Everything," Chigurh says. It is incredibly frightening. Indeed, once the killer has charged his stun gun a few times, we are tensed to expect the worse whenever he is on screen.
It's a memorable bad-guy performance from Bardem, one of Spain's very best actors, whose performances in Before Night Falls and The Sea Inside brought him to international attention. Chigurh, with his greasy black pudding-bowl haircut, moist dark eyes and Terminator-like remorselessness, is at once compelling and appalling.
While Chigurh pursues Moss (played with low-key macho charisma by Brolin), local sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) brings up the rear. With his horse and cowboy hat - but without a gun - Bell is the old hand dismayed by the indiscriminate bloodletting on his beat. "It's a mess, ain't it sheriff," muses his deputy. "If it ain't, it will do till the mess gets here," replies Bell, an admission of defeat in the face of such uncompromising killers.
Bell's pained, philosophical reflections punctuate the action scenes, all of which are tense and extremely well-executed. The best - such as when Moss attempts to retrieve the bag of cash from a motel room while the killer is inside, or when he sits opposite the door to his room, expecting an attack, unaware that Chigurh will shoot through the door knob itself - are worthy of Hitchcock.
Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald impresses with her transformation into Moss's sweet, down-to-earth Texan wife, while Woody Harrelson offers a cameo as another killer who enters the chase. The resolution is either a dazzling sleight of hand or a deflating misjudgement, depending on how you like your drama: I would argue that it is the only moment when the Coens lose their grip. Despite that, it's a wonderfully crafted film, and exhaustingly exciting, and so bleak that it lingers long in the mind.
WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY
DIRECTOR: JAKE KASDAN
RATING:
We've seen some very good music biopics recently, such as Ray and Walk The Line. Yet the genre is invariably so earnest - to be worthy of a film, the musical giant must claim all or some of: childhood tragedy, disability, drug abuse, marital conflict and dodgy sideburns - that spoof biopic Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story feels like payback.
The key to this amiable piece of silliness is that the filmmakers are clearly fond of the genre they are satirising, and of their fictitious character, whose long career we follow from his first blues composition, I Did A Bad Thing Cutting My Brother In Half, through hillbilly, rock'n'roll, folk, and even punk. Along the way Dewey meets Elvis and The Beatles, while himself approximating no-one more than Johnny Cash.
From that early misdeed with a machete, Dewey (John C Reilly) can tick all the boxes. Much is made of the "tragic" loss of his sense of smell, while his regular sojourns into drug abuse are, dare one say it, hilarious. The musical adventure is shrewdly done in that while Dewey's lyrics feed the comedy, the songs are played straight, and performed excellently by Reilly (who, if you recall, stole Chicago with his rendition of Mr Cellophane).
If the film's title seems familiar, think of Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby, both produced by the ubiquitous comedy filmmaker Judd Apatow. He has co-written this one with director Jake Kasdan, who has a nice light touch at the helm.
THE GOOD NIGHT
DIRECTOR: JAKE PALTROW
RATING:
The Good Night is a film so monotonous and depressing that one leaves it needing a stiff drink - quite an achievement for writer/director Jake Paltrow considering the cast he's mustered for his debut, which includes Danny DeVito, Martin Freeman, Simon Pegg, Penelope Cruz and his own sister, Gwyneth. To waste that lot constitutes a very bad day.
Freeman plays Gary, a former pop star now writing music for advertising and loathing every minute of it. At the same time, his relationship with Dora (Paltrow) is miserable for both for them. When Gary starts to dream about the same gorgeous, loving woman each night (Cruz) he goes to a dream guru (DeVito) to learn how to control his dream state, effectively giving up on his waking life.
The premise is fine, as is the option of drama over whimsy that leads Gary towards psychosis. The flaws are almost entirely in the delivery: the characters, as written and played, are dull, whiny and unsympathetic, the pacing is awful, and the attempt to make London look like New York absurd.
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