No Country For Old Men 4KUHD is the New Blu-ray Pick of the Week

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I’m a little late with this. I assume pretty much all of you follow my other blog and have heard my tales of illness and woe. Short end of it is I have pneumonia. I’m on the recovery end of it, but it was a rough go of it there for a bit.

The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are always bountiful with new releases and this week is no exception. The Coen Brothers are one of my favorite directors and No Country for Old Men is one of my favorite films of theirs. The Criterion Collection is releasing a 4K UHD disc this week so naturally it is my pick, but there are lots of other cool things coming out too which you can read about in my article over at Cinema Sentries.

Greedy People (2024)

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There is a lot of the Coen Brother’s filmography, especially Fargo, nesting inside of Greedy People. What with the violence in a small town, quirky characters, dark humor, inept burglars, and folksy musical choices. But the film can’t quite pull off that perfect Coen mix to make it more than just mild entertainment.

The script is full of characters with odd-ball quirks, but it rarely seems to know what to do with them, or how to make them actual fleshed-out people. In a similar manner the story is full of interesting incidents – some violent, some funny – but it never merges into a cohesive whole. Still, it is quite entertaining and very enjoyable to watch.

Will Shelley (Himesh Patel) has just graduated from the police academy and has moved his very pregnant wife Paige (Lily James) to a small, island community off the coast of South Carolina. A place he hopes will be a peaceful place to raise a family.

His smart, and gentle boss Captain Murphy (Uzo Aduba) assigns Officer Terry Brogan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), affable, abrasive, and redneck to the core, to show Shelley the ropes. Brogan has a few rules every cop should live by. The first of which is “Don’t kill anybody unless you have to.” Because it gets “messy.” Also, you should get a hobby because this is a small town and the job is boring.

Mostly Brogan shows Shelley where to get free coffee and doughnuts. Then he decides to stop by his married girlfriend’s house for some afternoon delight, leaving Shelley to wait in the cruiser. When a call comes in for what Shelley believes is an in-progress burglary he honks the horn at Brogan and then heads to the scene without him.

To say things go bad would be an understatement. He accidentally discharges his weapon when the homeowner (Traci Lords) surprises him. When she defends herself the ensuing tussle finds her dead, having fallen on a table loging a piece of it into her skull.

Brogan shows up, and they both freak out, but when they find $1 million in cash inside a box, they come up with a plan. Make it look like a robbery gone bad and they can keep the money.

To say things only get worse from there would be yet another understatement.

It is all very Coen-esque. Like the Coens the film is not afraid to get real dark, but it is also quite funny and enjoyable to watch. But unlike the Coen Brothers movies, this doesn’t have a lot of depth to it. It feels too scripted.

For example, Brogan’s hobby is listening to CDs to learn Mandarin Chinese. He, very adeptly, says something in that language and when asked what it means he notes it means “I speak fluent Chinese.” He’s learning the language because his girlfriend is Chinese. A guy as dumb and redneck as Brogan is learning to speak fluent Chinese is funny and quirky, but I’m not sure how realistic it is.

So much of the movie is like this. Characters are given quirks which gives the film character, but it all feels scripted. You can feel the writing in it. The plot is similar. This woman accidentally gets killed on Shelley’s first day. There happens to be a million dollars lazily stashed in a basket. The dead lady’s husband (Tim Blake Nelson) just happened to have hired a hitman to kill his wife on the same day Shelly accidentally did the deed. There are apparently two competing hitmen on this small island and they are easy to contact. Etc. There are a lot of coincidences and oddities that are completely unrealistic.

Still, the performances are good. Gordon-Levitt is excellent at switching from goofball to menacing villain from one minute to the next. Lilly James isn’t given much for her character to do but she makes it her own. Etc.

Call it Coen Brothers-lite. Call it pretty good.

Fargo (1996)

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I’ve talked before about how I went to see Fargo in the theater when it first came out. About how I went in blind, knowing nothing about it, and came out loving it. I saw it three times in the theater, bringing new friends each time.

When it came out on VHS I remember my local video store had this big cardboard cutout of the film. It had a tag, or maybe a critic quote on it stating that it was a really good thriller or some such thing. I remember being surprised because I thought of it as a comedy – a dark, pitch-black comedy, but a comedy nonetheless.

Of course, it has thriller elements, and that probably is its biggest genre. But I realize that the Coen Brothers have a warped sense of humor, one that perfectly fits mine.

I love that movie, and I still think it is hilarious. I picked up a Blu-ray of the film in 2014 and wrote a review for Cinema Sentries.

Murder Mysteries In May: Blood Simple (1984)

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Rare has a debut film been so self-assured, so completely full of what would become the filmmaker’s regular themes and style than the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple. It isn’t their best film, but it is a great one, and it is absolutely through and through a Coen Brothers movie.

The title comes from a line in Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest in which a character starts getting a little punchy after being involved in a series of murders. The plot is original, but it was clearly influenced by another hard-boiled crime writer – James M. Cain, with bits of Jim Thompson thrown in for good measure.

The Coens would return to the hard-boiled film noir well many times in their careers. Their third film, Miller’s Crossing stole plot points from two Hammett novels – Red Harvest and The Glass Key. The Big Lebowski is a modern, stoner retelling of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Neither Fargo, No Country For Old Men, nor The Man Who Wasn’t There seem directly influenced by any hard-boiled novel that I know of, but they fit right into that milieu.

But let’s get back to Blood Simple. The plot finds a sleazy bar owner named Julien (Dan Hedaya) hiring Loren Visser (M. Emmett Walsh) an even sleazier private detective to kill his wife Abby (Frances McDormand in her first film role) who is cheating on him with his barkeep Ray (John Getz).

One of the many joys of the film is following its labyrinth plot so I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say things do not go as planned. Like so many noirs none of the characters are particularly bright, and rarely do they actually understand what’s going on. I don’t think either Abby or Ray ever realized that Loren even exists.

All of the Coen’s style is here, even if it is in a slightly rougher form. There are a couple of bravura shots that feel like first-time directors trying to show off what they can do, but they are pretty impressive all the same.

The entire cast is fantastic. Frances McDormand immediately shows herself to be one of the greatest actors of a generation. But the movie belongs to M. Emmett Walsh. He’s great in everything, but he’s particularly slimy here (and wonderful).

It is a terrific film, one that keeps getting better everytime I watch it and an absolutely smashing debut for some of my favorite directors.

The First Movie of 2024: Miller’s Crossing (1990)

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I always make a big deal out of the first film I watch in a given year. I guess I feel like it sets the theme for the year or some such thing. Or maybe I just like stats and the first anything of the year seems randomly important.

As I noted in previous posts we were supposed to be in Kentucky today, the first day of 2024. But Covid kept us home. That and a million other things kept me from really thinking about what movie I’d watch today. In fact, I spent most of the day not watching movies at all, but binge-watching the excellent Amazon series Fleabag.

But as night came I knew I needed to watch a movie and my mind completely randomly thought of Miller’s Crossing, the 1990 gangster film from the Coen Brothers.

I love the Coen Brothers. I have ever since I first watched Fargo in 2006. That movie blew me away. It was so quirky, and funny, and violent. I had previously watched Raising Arizona, but at the time it didn’t make much sense to me. I now consider it one of the funniest movies of all time.

After Fargo I started seeking out Coen Brothers movies. I think I first watched Barton Fink (didn’t get it at first but now consider it a classic). Then I watched Miller’s Crossing and absolutely loved it.

That movie single-handedly turned me on to the writings of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and made me a fan of film noir. I owe it a lot.

I hadn’t seen it in years so this viewing was somewhat fresh. It is still absolutely perfect.

It is loosely based on Hammett’s novels Red Harvest and The Glass Key, but with plenty of Coen Brothers spin. Gabriel Byrne plays Tom Reagan the right-hand man to mob boss Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) who gets into a war with up-and-coming gangster Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito). There are lots of twists and turns making the plot a bit confusing on first viewing, but it is full of wonderful dialogue and that Coen Brothers humor. It looks great, the acting is great, and the music by Carter Burwell is beautiful. It remains one of my all-time favorite films.

I think that makes a good start to 2024.

The Ladykillers (1955)

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As part of the ongoing transition of the blog, I have decided to add a weekly feature: The Classic Movie Review of the Week. I’ve always reviewed classic movies, so I’ve decided to do a full-length review of one classic movie each Monday.

The Coen Brothers have a very unique sense of style. Their films are often visually arresting, filled with violence and a bizarre sense of humor that is both black and hyperkinetic. Nearly each of their films has tackled a different genre.

Their first film, Blood Simple, is filled with violence, double crossings, betrayals, and lots of shadows. You could call it an update of the traditional film noir. In fact, many of the Coen Brothers’ films are influenced by noir, both from the cinema and many of the detective novels that spawned them.

Miller’s Crossing, though primarily a gangster picture, takes much of its plot from two Dashiell Hammett novels: The Glass Key and Red Harvest. Likewise, the plot twists that go nowhere in The Big Lebowski are reminiscent of many of Raymond Chandler’s works, and IMDB notes that the film was inspired by Robert Altman’s version of Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. Though, being a Coen film, they move the time frame up and make it a stoner flick. It’s The Big Sleep meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

The Coen’s have also created their own versions of such genres as the screwball comedy (Hudsucker Proxy with Jennifer Jason Lee doing her best His Girl Friday impression), the musical (O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?), cartoon shorts from Looney Tunes (Raising Arizona) and the true life crime drama (Fargo, though in true Coen Brother’s style they claimed it was based on real events, though they actually made it all up.)

In 2003 they hit on new territory with the romantic comedy, Intolerable Cruelty. Though filled with some classic Coen moments their take on this genre fell flat. Being the first film in which someone other than the brothers took partial screenplay credits (Sam Raimi takes co-writing credit on Hudsucker Proxy, but he is an old Coen collaborator.) The results of relinquishing some control of the story created what is easily the brother’s worst picture up to that point.

Their next picture likewise took over some unusual ground for the genre. They remade the 1955 British crime comedy, The Ladykillers. It stunk, and that badly.

Working with other writers = not very good.
Remaking somebody else’s film = crapola.

Here’s hoping their next picture is a complete original.

The Ladykillers was bad enough that it made me wonder what the Coens saw in the original that made them think updating it was a good idea. I checked out a copy from the excellent local library to see how it faired.

After watching it I can see how it appealed to the Coen Brothers. It is a bit absurd, quite funny, and rather violent, in a twisted kind of way.

This time Alec Guinness stars in the Tom Hanks role as a criminal mastermind who poses as a genteel professor renting a room in a feeble old ladies’ home. His gang of thieves (which includes a very young Peter Sellers in one of his earliest film roles) plot their crime while pretending to be a band rehearsing in the home. The house, it seems, is the perfect location for a hideout after they rob an armored car. The old lady will provide a perfect alibi.

The setup is really just a means to create some pretty humorous comedy involving the gang of criminals being befuddled by a harmless, clueless old lady. The comedy is rather British, which doesn’t always translate to an American state of mind. I found it to be rather smiling funny, rather than bowling over, spitting popcorn on my carpet funny.

The real fun for me was watching Alec Guinness act the role of a smarmy, conniving crook. He really chews on his role, creating such a vile villain, it becomes difficult to believe that the old lady (whose character is called Mrs. Wilberforce, and who I really must stop referring to as an old lady) would let him into her house, no matter how gentlemanly his manners make him seem. It is a part a long way from Obi-Wan Kenobi or Colonel Nicholson, and it is nice to see him play such a bad guy.

Katie Johnson (who plays Mrs. Wilberforce, who I really must stop referring to by her character name) does a lovely job playing an eccentric, out-of-touch, and really rather lovely lady. And it is a treat to see Peter Sellers before he was Inspector Clouseu or Dr. Strangelove.

In the end, I’m still unsure as to why the Coen Brothers chose this film to remake. Or why they chose to remake any picture at all, since their greatest skill lies within crafting interesting stories. The original was an enjoyable picture and covers similar territory as many of the Coen pictures. Yet there are so many other films that cover the same kind of ground, which could have been chosen. Perhaps it was just obscure enough that they figured that most audiences wouldn’t have anything to compare their remake too, unlike remaking say The Maltese Falcon or something. Although John Turturro could really do something with the Peter Lorre part.