DVD Title: No Country for Old Men
Time: 122 mins
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly McDonald.
Genre: Crime Drama.
Rated: R for violence and language.
DVD Features: Featurettes include making of, Working with the Coens and Diary of a County Sheriff.
We Recommend: Buy this one and commit the dialogue to memory. You will be much smarter for it.

DVD Title: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Time: 160 mins
Stars: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker.
Genre: Western Biopic.
Rated: R for some strong violence and brief sexual references.
DVD Features: Behind the Scenes; Making of Documentary.
We Recommend: Rent unless Westerns are your thing.


Two reviews in the space of one? No, it’s not lazy journalism, it’s called concurrent themes, people! Seriously, these two DVDs have several things in common: There’s psychopaths and guns. Oh, and the whole Oscar-nominated thing.

Both are suspenseful tales of larger-than-life figures who inspired fear and left a lot of dead bodies full of exit wounds in the dust. Both take place in the past. Both No Country’s Anton Chigurh and Assassination’s Jesse James are ruthless killers who overshadow the supposed heroes, who aren’t very admirable but, rather, greedy, thus deserving their trials by fire (and don’t we all love a good trial by fire?)

No Country’s Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem, who won the Best Actor Oscar for this role) dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of the $2 million in drug money that has been accidentally found and stolen by a dim-witted Texas hunter named Llewelyn (played by Josh Brolin). You realise early on that this guy might kill anybody, at any time, for any reason. Getting his hands on a bag full of $100 bills is just gravy.

Rather than reporting a massacre he finds after a drug deal gone wrong, Llewelyn takes the money for himself, but his decency gets the best of him and ultimately dooms him to be pursued by the double-crossed Mexican gangsters, as well as the psycho Chigurh. I kept thinking, what would I do if I were in this situation? The answer: Get myself killed probably.

Bardem’s character isn’t just your standard killer. He’s like a force of nature, if you want to get deep, he’s a metaphor for an increasingly senseless, violent world (see, film studies paid off). If I met this guy in real life, I’d probably tell him he was crazier than hell right before he agreed and blew my head off.

In The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the agent of terror is the famous outlaw, who just wants to put his glory days behind him and be a family man (don’t we all?). Pitt deserved an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Jesse James, especially when you consider that his killer is more tortured and sympathetic than Bardem’s killing machine Chigurh. The Oscar nomination went to Casey Affleck, who gives a memorable performance as a young man who first idolises then resents the bandit leader.

Watching it, I recalled occasions when I got to meet someone I looked up to, only to discover later on that they weren’t all I thought they were cracked up to be. Jesse James cruelly taunts the youngster, but I probably would too if anyone had such a creepy obsession with me. Like most of my ex-girlfriends (hel-lo ladies!).

In both of these movies, there are moments when the heroes are in deep trouble because of their flawed choices and face the real threat of a violent demise. Fate, in the form of Chigurh and James, is coming for them like the grim reaper. In the case of Jesse James, he becomes paranoid and unpredictably violent.

These movies work because everyone can relate to people who want to have more and be more. And we all know there can be consequences for taking ethical shortcuts, don’t we Savvy readers?

What separates these two movies is the talent of Joel and Ethan Coen, who shared an Oscar for directing. Their movies have always had a pacing and sense of storytelling that make toilet breaks a blunt impossibility. Whereas Assassination tends to drag a bit in places, No Country for Old Men grabs you by the throat early on and doesn’t let go – you feel exhausted after watching it. The fact that No Country for Old Men won Best Picture tells you something about the dark mood of American cinema and audiences these days.

The fact that I’ve watched it five times this week is something for another article altogether.