Bloodworthy

Iffin' ya'll ain't seen No Country for Old Men, git thee to a the-ater afore the week closes out.

The famous brothers Coen took Cormac McCarthy's searing tale of an inexorable evil let loose on our time, and threw it up on the wide screen so you can't escape it.

Ain't even no point in sinkin' low in yore seat...too late, ya feel in yore marrow.

T'is a preview for the world thas' a'comin soon to a neighborhood near yores.

Mayhap youse one of the ones who done felt he ground under ya tremor a bit, but ya jes' thought, "Naw, it cain't be. I must'a eaten somethin' funny."

When "good ole boy" Llewellyn Moss (His name means "lion-like) was out huntin' game he came up on a busted drug deal, a heap o' shot up Mexicans and one dyin' soul who was thirstier'n hell.

No piker, Lew (Josh Brolin) seen thar' was truckload of heroin an was smart enough to cover
it up again and walk on. But when he found the money man dead under a tree, Lew took to cash--and the modern Chorus chants, "wouldn't you?" But as they say, "He set off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence..."

In twenty-four hours the chase is on...the inhuman pursuit is presaged by the hounds of hell--the pit bull scene (Check out She-9's review) whar' the killing machine dawg foreshadows the killing machine assassin to come.

Out in the desert, thangs cain't hide, “This country is hard on people" ... Cormac McCarthy set his tale of modern horror on a clear plain, whar' the reader/viewer is forced to "plainly" see what is comin'. So does a Ed Tom Bell, the "good ole boy" Sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones. At the opening the voice of Sheriff Bell is heard puzzling over a death row rapist killer who'd said "He always knew he would kill, and would do it again, given the opportunity." And he muses over callous urban killers who buried old folks in the back yard and stole their social security and "nobody took note" until one of the victims ran from the house wearing nuthin' but a dog collar.

This crusty border sheriff, hopin' to save a foolish Llewellyn from the savagery to come, realizes this is no ordinary foe: "I'd never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind."

Yep, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell reads trail like a pro, but this here is a trail that he ain't never seen in 30 years of of law enforcement. An' he's spooked.

Sheriff Bell* "Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don't want to confront him. I have seen his work."

To the modern world blind to real evil, No Country jerks the viewer's smug assurance to attention. In disbelievin' shock, a bicycling boy cries, "Mister, ya' got a bone stickin' outa yore arm.. hey Mister, ya got a bone stickin' outa yore arm...hey Mister? But his 12 year old buddy is willing to make deal with the bone-man. Oh! the blindness of those who will not see--even if a bone be stickin' outa an arm.

Some sheeple innocently encounter the menace of assassin Anton Chigurh casually totin' a gas powered cattle gun for killin' his prey.... these naive dolts don't recognize their fate: Innocence is no defense to the evil among us. When a feckless gas attendant gets a whiff of the apocalypse the Machine is amused,

"Is that what you're asking me? 'Is there something wrong with anything?' "

Javirer Bardum turns in a riveting performance as the maniacal stalker, utterly smashing through the hashed over, Lex Luthor-ish bogey-men of Hollywood's stock caricatures.

Llewellyn, to his credit, finally does understand. It won't do to simply give the money back. The battle must be fought since evil ain't ever pacified--evil was invited and evil will come. Let the carnage begin.

There are moments of black humor, but this ain't no standard date night. However, plan to go somewhere for a stiff night cap (youse gonna need it!) an' talk over the question Cormac asks: Has our disbelievin' age grown so easy wif' moral ambiguity that we's opened a crack in the universe, an now some unchained evil prototype done slithered through? If so, how are we goin' to meet the oncoming darkness rollin' in off the plain?

Aunty won't spoil the end, but let's meet back here on Monday and see if we'uns can figger out what it means.


That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees--
Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
~~~~~~William Butler Yeats



Sheriff "Bell":

From John Donne:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself...
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

"Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris - "Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die." PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.