No Country for Old Men 2007

A truly scary film. With Scary Movie, and a never-ending pit of dire horror films, typically where a group of Americans (often with a limp-wristed blonde), go out unsuspectingly to their uncles cabin, where some bizarre demon lurks with the single objective of shouting at the children. I mean, really, in an evolutionary sense, how does that work? Sharks, leopards, spiders, tigers, vultures, all these things are scary because of their role in the evolutionary cycle - what does a constantly screaming goblin creature achieve? After it's clawed the blonde girl's top off, and scratched the carefully-made up cheekbones of the Jock lad, does it go home to its goblin family and say "Hey, honey I'm home. You won't believe the day I've had!" then sit down to a nice cup of goblin tea and Strictly Come Goblin Dancing?

No Country for Old Men, however, is just great. Javier Bardem, allegedly a big hit in Spain, has appeared as the mysterious lover in Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona, and comes into his own as Anton Chigurh, a Mexican gangster. He stalks around, clad in black, speaking with a clipped Spanish accent, and ruthlessly murdering innocent Southerners. His encounter with the elderly owner of a gas station is really deeply unsettling, and Bardem comes off as a completely insane and demonic killer.

When I started to watch this film on my computer, I thought I'd half pay attention, and half trawl the intermesh, but a terrifyingly brutal scene where Barden strangles a police officer with a pair of handcuffs, and blood spurts all over the floor, meant I was bolt upright in my seat, and I hurriedly closed down all the other programs.

Charming hillbilly Llewellyn Moss happens across $2m in cash left at the scene of a drugs deal gone wrong, and the rest of the film is spent as he tries to escape Chigurh, leading to an excellent line of dialogue, "You think you can make a deal with Anton Chigurh? If you laid down ALL the money on the ground in front of him, he'd still kill you just for... inconveniencing him".

I won't reveal the ending, but it stays true to the tagline "There are no clean getaways". An underrated film. Possibly so because it is so brutal, and there is no mercy, high-speed car chases, or happy ending. Something in the darkness of the film is oddly compelling, and the building of tension and panning shots of the dustbowl landscape really capture this backward land. ★★★★★