Member review

This long tiring thriller-western is set in the arid, scorching state of Texas. The isolation of place and sense of vast and emptiness established in the opening wide shots, conveys the loneliness each of our characters face. Llewlyn Moss played superbly by Josh Brolin, stumbles across a mass murder and drug money to which his calm and unreactive reaction is a cause of him being a veteran, we follow him as he out wits and attempts out run our hitman.

Anton Chigurh is a psychopathic hitman, his deadly weapon an oxygen tank used to give livestock a swift death. Perhaps this is done to reflect his outlook on life, other humans in his eyes are expendable livestock. And after a time he no longer chases the money but the hunger for slaughter. His reserved odd nature unsettles us as we see him chance the fate of a man on a coin flip.

Sherriff Ed Tom is our relief from all this darkness with his wit and humour he finds what Llewlyn does and attempts to save him from an inevitable death, he has a sympathetic nature to him acting as a paternalistic figure. The harshness of Western and American society has resulted in him wanting to retire, as he takes pride in being in a line of Sheriffs, we see his true complicated relationship with his father and discontentment with the current world. Truly an inducing narrator played amazingly by Tommy Lee Jones, a perfect cast.

Overall the Coen brothers have created a film where it seems that people fulfil actions and these consequences entangle us with each other, it is bleak outlook on life, There is no resolution with our assassin for hire (arguably a serial killer at this point) walking off. To say the least it is a bleak, dark and blood filled film that reminds us perhaps that life is not a tory with a happy ending but a random journey full of pain and selfishness.