I tried to read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road about a year ago, but it’s lack of dialogue is not something I’ve ever been able to appreciate in any literature. I expect some external dialogue and would almost rather have all dialogue than none. Although I could not finish the book The Road, I will watch the movie when it’s released. And tonight I watched another McCarthy adaptation: No Country for Old Men by the Coen Brother’s whose  O’ Brother Where Art Thou? was absolutely not my favorite film. I liken No Country more to their Fargo (starring the wonderful Frances McDormand) with the subtly, mundane motif of fate pulling the puppet strings of humanity in the furthest reaches of Middle America.

Bardem’s buzz is dead on, and albeit I’ve not seen all Oscar nominated films, My God, this man’s already won his Oscar, and I would even contend that his hair should get its own statuette. Bardem plays a terminator-like assassin chockfull of actual emotions. His looping, frame play with the quarter of fate toyed with the idea that in the large scheme of things, everything is absolutely inconsequential and completely noncoincidental all-at-once. He fails to assassinate the first game’s player, while the second it’s understood he’s murdered her before he simply walks for her house as he checks for blood on his shoes.

Although I can barely consider anything Brolin’s ever been in, I think we can agree that Tommy Lee Jones is one of the most talented (and sometimes underrated) actors of his generation. His age, dropping wrinkles, and eyes just add watery charm to his Sheriff’s character who’s subtly torn between bringing home Brolin’s Llewellyn to his wife Carla Jean and retiring from the force. He eventually makes one decision that directly correlates to the other.

If you’re looking for a thinking man’s movie with a paucity of action then enjoy this film. It’s brief staccato violence only enhances our final ironically enigmatic scene with our antagonist, while Jones’ discussion with his wife about a dream in which his deceased father goes ahead of him over snowy mountains to make a fire and await his son’s arrival, truly suggests that the onset of Jones’ final adventure into retirement makes early 1980′s Texas no longer a country for old men, or at least for the men in this book as the screen turns black.