IMDb #171 Review: No Country for Old Men (2007)

Source: Wikipedia

A sad old sheriff chases a strong young psychopath who chases a befuddled middle-aged white guy fleeing to Mexico with a briefcase full of drug money. This could easily veer into slapstick territory; it doesn't. Instead, it opts for breathtaking vistas of the Tex-Mex borderlands, not to mention breathtaking brutal murder.

(Thanks, Cormac McCarthy. And congratulations on the Nobel Prize for that book about the slow agonizing demise of post-apocalyptic civilization.)

So there's this game hunter, out by his lonesome in the Texas wilderness. He finds a bunch of shot-up pickup trucks and bloated corpses. A drug deal gone wrong, he supposes. He finds money. At the worst possible imaginable time of night, he takes the money. He evades murderous drug dealers and his wife's passive-aggressive barbs.

Who could have figured on a brilliant blank-eyed psychopath with a killer oxygen tank.

A moment to explain. The shaggy-haired villain uses what Wikipedia calls a captive bolt pistol. It pushes a bolt down a shaft through a tank of compressed air. Usually used to brain cattle, this guy uses it on humans and stubborn doorknob cylinders. (There's a metaphor in there somewhere. People are cattle? Save beef, eat doorknobs?)

A battle of blue-collar ingenuity ensues. A war ignobly fought in motel showers and roadside gas stations. The killer is so detestable for his propensity to casually murder strangers, the heroes so helpless to protect themselves and their loved ones, the law enforcement so befuddled by it all, that can result in suspense. It would be sensational, if it weren't so mercilessly depressing.

Harrowing escapism melts into a lukewarm puddle of harsh reality. Where good guys die horribly, bad guys get away, and old people retire to wallow in failure, survivor's guilt, and hard-earned PTSD. FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY.

122 minutes.