Roger Ebert's explanation of the "No Country" plot

AGAIN, MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS! NONE OF THIS IS SAFE TO READ! STOP AND SEE THE MOVIE FIRST!


I mean that too. This is a great movie, already in imdb.com's top 25 with over 11,000 votes in less than a month of its release. While scanning the blogs, I realized I read Roger Ebert's review prior to watching No Country for Old Men, but not afterwards. There was a spoiler in it that ruined the movie (indeed some of the better parts) which I wisely skipped over (the Chirugh in me was very tempted to read). Reading the review again, I realized it explained such plot that much more of the movie makes sense. Please allow me quote Mr. Ebert before going into further detail... I quote...



If the men in the drug deal all killed one another, and the man who unknowingly carried the transponder died under the tree, how did Chigurh come into the picture? I think it's because he set up the deal, planned to buy the drugs with the "invested" $2 million, end up with the drugs and get the money back. That the actual dealers all killed one another in the desert and the money ended in the hands of a stranger was not his plan. That theory makes sense, or it would, if Chigurh were not so peculiar; it is hard to imagine him negotiating such a deal. "Do you have any idea," Carson Wells asks him, "how crazy you really are?"



End of quote...

I will say, briefly, I admire Mr. Ebert, and this explanation which gives greater detail to the plot without making it obvious or destracting from the scenes of characters revealing themselves. It makes sense as well.

Why exactly should we buy his explanation. First off, Chirugh is- for lack of a better word- pretty damn ****ed up. He kills. He probably doesn't know why, but he does. I don't see it outside of his actions to set up a situation where he has to kill, I don't know... a bunch of mexican drug dealers? He did know off the bat who sent Carson Welles to recover the money, which gives me reason to believe he put the money before people so he could kill them all and steal everything, including what he "invested." But because Chirugh is Chirugh, he gets caught up in killing instead of recovering what he had lost. It also explains why he kills his "managerial" associates and everyone else without issue or thought... he's planned this for the bloodbath and is so far ahead of the game, only the unplanned Moss is putting up anything of a race.

What I appreciate about the Coen's (if this explanation is true) is they don't reveal this. In a time of twist endings, they don't show this mighty subplot of revealing how everything happened from the beginning, but leaves us in awe of the characters instead of distracted with the excessive details in the plot. They avoid this so well, in hindsight, I'm curious if the twist in Saw distracted me from more entertaining torture.

On a final note, I firmly believe a good book should not get in the way of a good movie, and a good movie should not get in the way of a good book. Let each be true to making their respective feild as good as it can be. Please don't tell me what the plot is in the book, because I'm not criticizing the book, I'm examining the movie. Until I walk up to Cormac McCarthy and tell him to make his book more like the movie, I ask the same of those who feel the movie ruins a book. To each feild their own.

Thanks,
Robert in the Red Tie

7 Interpretations of No Country for Old Men

There have been various interpretations for No Country for Old Men, which I have observed on imdb.com and Jim Emerson's scanners (http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/). MAJOR SPOILERS ALERT! DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE YET TO SEE THE MOVIE! Here are some of the different interpretations, making this movie a must-see-again movie.

1. Anton Chirugh is the devil. Ed Bell is God. Close attention to the cowboy hats represents halos. Notice when they're on or off. Around Bell they are on (Bell's is always on), when fighting with Chirugh they tend to fall off. Bell is coming to terms with seeing the world around him fall apart, while Chirugh passes through it. The ending note of the movie is a peaceful relax. God sits back and talks of how he sees the end, a peaceful haven without Chirugh.

2. It is mythology references, similiar to the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? The three dogs killed are the three-headed hound guarding the afterlife in Hades, as the Rio Grande River between Texas and Mexico is the Styx, the river crossed for the way to Hell (U.S. is the Hell, hence "no country for old men").

3. The repetition of 114 (the room Moss dies in, among other references) is a possible connection to Revelations 1:14... When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last."

4. Chirugh is death personified. When people have done wrong or entered the workforce that may kill them, he takes them down with certainty. The officer at the start is naive to underestimate and misunderstand someone he picks up, Moss is a thief, and Welles is a bounty hunter with his guard down. The coin flips are less certain, left to fate. Bell is close to death in his pursuit, but retires to accept he is helpless against the fate of the people around him. Moss' wife is enlightened after the death of her husband and mother, and therefore leaves her fate to a higher power (instead of "chance" represented by the coin) and asks Chirugh to make his mind up on his own.

5. Chirugh and Bell are the same person. This is why Chirugh never worries about fingerprints and Bell never looks for them. Bell is the only person that comes close to Chirugh without engaging in gunfire. Bell follows Chirugh. Chirugh isn't in El Paso until Bell is there. Bell is always certain of what is happening and what is fruitless in persuing Chirugh. They sit in the same places and drink the same milk. When Chirugh comes to Moss' wife, she is not surprised to see him, but she never specifies who he is. (Although I find this a stretch from any literal interpretation, it does show clearly the perception that the two are opposite ends of the same coin. The slim possibility they could be the same person shows exactly how close they are in understanding each other.)

6. The stash of cash is proof "money is the root of all evil." The film just focuses on all evil caused because of it.

7. Literal meaning. See Faber's Law #3: "if it isn't what it isn't, it is what it is." All symbols aside, it's about real people. Bell is coming to terms with such evil as Chirugh in his town and him useless against it, while Moss fulfills the obligation of doing everything he desperately can do to save himself and his wife. It's also about people realizing their fates. Wells is stupid to be snuck up on by Chirugh, while Moss is naive to avoid him, and Bell retires to accept he won't die in gunfire. Only Moss' wife accepts her fate (to higher powers if Chirugh and the coin represents anything) enlightened by the death of her mother and husband.

I would like to end with a quote by Earnest Hemmingway, No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things."

Let this not be an area of dispute, but instead multiple interpretations.

Movies I'm Excited About: "Juno" and "Charlie Wilson's War"

As some of you may have noticed, on the sidebar of this blog I have added a section called "Movies I'm Excited About" with a list of links to the imdb.com pages of those movies. (Note: I don't pick all of these because I think they'll be good or great movies. Anything with Keira Knightley will be going up on the list.) Two movies added to that list are Juno and Charlie Wilson's War.

First up is Juno, about a teenager with an unplanned pregnancy. Feel free to stop reading to see the trailer below.

Why this movie? For starters, anyone who's seen Thank You for Smoking knows it is one-of-a-kind humor, in part for the narration and editing. Take a second look at the how, when she tells her parents the father is Paulie Bleeker, the editing and cuts go to the the super-nerd from Superbad (Michael Cera as Paulie Bleeker). Again, when talking about the "stink-eye," the cuts are well-timed for the girl with half a face. Imagine a movie full of these, just as Thank You for Smoking was filled with similiar cuts to keep it well paced and moving.


The gem and centerpiece of the movie would be a great performance by Ellen Page. Her resume includes the suspense thriller Hard Candy and the walk-through-walls Kitty Pyle in X-Men 3. She may never have recieved enough attention for her role in Hard Candy, where a 14-year-old girl uses herself as bait for a trap against a pedophile. The movie is a two-man (or one-man, one-girl) show that she carried half the weight of in the tortureous settings. It is one thing for an entire movie to rest on two actors, but it is another for the movie to be so well-done in mind games that we keep guessing Page's age throughout the movie. (She was 20 at the time of making the movie.)

Equal appreciatation should go to J.K. Simmons and Alison Janney, who's few lines in the preview define the family's approach. I couldn't think of a better group, and I definitely couldn't think of those two together, but their sense of humor (compare Janney on "The West Wing" to Simmons on Thank You for Smoking and you'll start to see) works well off of each other.

I had the previlege of meeting Charlie Wilson when he spoke before a group of students at Texas A&M University. He told us about how he won is first election was it was the first chance for many black citizens to vote in his city, so he volunteered to drive people from the local black church to the polls, where, along the way, he would just tell them in passing the man he was running against had killed his dog (I don't believe he was lying about the dog as the man was his neighbor and the death of his dog is the very reason Wilson sought to unseat the man in office). As the photo above shows, the three key actors in Charlie Wilson's War have the look, and I personally know Tom Hanks has the character down. Again, feel free to stop reading to watch the trailer below...

Aside from the fact I miss Aaron Sorkin ever since his time ended on "The West Wing" and "Studio 60," and his film resume has been slightly small, there is one thing he always nails: he can make politics clearly understood. When the government student and the apathetic can sit down and be on the same page throughout an episode of "The West Wing" and The American President, you have some great writing. While I know the politics and consequences following the events in Charlie Wilson's War, I cannot explain them to you so clearly as Sorkin can.

The other half of Sorkin's writing is the humor, be it workplace ("The West Wing"), courtroom (A Few Good Men), or the uner-the-table deals (Charlie Wilson's War). Regardless of your political affiliation, the characters surrounding Sorkin's writing are just plain fun. If you didn't get a smile out of something in that preview, you weren't paying attention.

Furthermore, the timing for this movie couldn't have been better. Even if interpretted as scolding Wilson for providing weapons to Afghanistan (guess who's weapons they're still using now), the point of looking at the long-road and how to avoid more devastating battles in the future remain the same. The topic alone, if given in the proper light to historical facts, would make this movie one everyone should see to better understand the world around them.

Thanks,
--Jack

The Quiet Guy and the Wild Guy

If I had to put money on two actors that are going to become more and more of a household name, it would be Joseph Gordon-Lovett and Ben Foster.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the actor who's name isn't big enough (yet) to put in a oscar contender, but he avoids the major budget films for those with acting in them. He is easily the other side of Shia La'Beouf's career, no Transformers or Disturbia, but he goes for the understudies. In Brick (2005) he played a high school gumshoe looking into the death of his ex-girlfriend. It was a visual piece, as the former editor of personal favorite May (2002) tried his hand at directing. It was a visual success, and Gordon-Levitt completed the success by his acting in different character stances for the camera. Next was The Lookout (2007), where he is a brain-damaged janitor beside a blind Jeff Daniels. Both were convincing, but the movie was released at the wrong time of year. It wasn't a summer blockbuster, but a late winter/early spring drama of a heist. Gordon-Levitt's performance is thoroughly convincing as the semi-capable janitor exploited by "friends," and given the proper role, he could easily be nominated for an oscar. Richard Roeper calls The Lookout one of the best movies so far (this was said in May 2007). The story of his career. The best, until the bigger comes. His time will come.

The wild guy, and also a "third guy" is Ben Foster. You've probably seen him more than once in the movie, and you remember the character but not the actor. Ben Foster is that character. He doesn't play the leads. He usually plays the person with a memorable role, little screen time, a trailer clip, and large plot importance at either the beginning or end. The pop status (and fangirl obsessions) started after he was beside Kristen Dunst (whom he later dated) in the small-hit teenager film Get Over It (2001). The real start for him was in Hostage (2005) where he played the psychotic Mars Krupcheck in extra creepy scenes with Bruce Willis' daughter. After that was X-Men 3 where he played a small, yet visually symbollic role of Angel (seen left). In Alpha Dog, he played the supporting role of the dealer who owes money to the kids that kidnap his brother. He is opposite Sharon Stone and one of the few actors in the film that targetted the pop/white-gangsta crowd with Emile Hurst (The Girl Next Door) and Justin Timberlake. A true rise of roles came around in 3:10 to Yuma, where he is the third most interesting and intimating of the gunslingers. He plays Charlie Prince, the quick-draw double-gunner who has grown to have affection for Ben Wade (Russell Crowe). The performance and deadliness is unmatched, appearing almost as a monster of the West, a creature and force to be reckoned with. The final character is the stranger in 30 Days of Night, who's creepy line, "That cold ain't the weather. That's death coming." The line made the trailer, if not the movie. The signifigance of this filmography is the variety and the memorability he puts into even the small roles. Much like Val Kilmer switching from Batman to Doc Holiday, Foster switches from gunslinger to gangsta to semi-vampire as fast and easy as Christian Bale does for his roles. This variety gives him the advantage to fill any big role, and the recent history of the memorable smaller roles in multiple movies makes him one of the most marketable and promising actors right now.

Keep an eye on these guys. Foster is hard to recognize he changes his appearance so often, and Gordon-Levitt isn't in the most advertised movies, but I can bet you money one day they will be.

Welcome to the Red Tie Rant

This blog was created to remove the more stupid stuff from the other stupid stuff. This is everything that doesn't really mater and isn't cohesive thought. This is my ranting and fanboy spot. Reviews are on www.redtiereview.blogspot.com, my list of greats are on www.redtiegreats.blogspot.com, and my laws for movies are on www.redtielaw.blogspot.com.

Thanks,
--Jack