Beautiful Shiloh Doesn't Care

Anton Chigurh: What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: Sir?
Anton Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.
Gas Station Proprietor: I don't know. I couldn't say.
[Chigurh flips a quarter from the change on the counter and covers it with his hand]
Anton Chigurh: Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Call it?
Anton Chigurh: Yes.
Gas Station Proprietor: For what?
Anton Chigurh: Just call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Well, we need to know what we're calling it for here.
Anton Chigurh: You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.
Gas Station Proprietor: I didn't put nothin' up.
Anton Chigurh: Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?
Gas Station Proprietor: No.
Anton Chigurh: 1958. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
Anton Chigurh: Everything.
Gas Station Proprietor: How's that?
Anton Chigurh: You stand to win everything. Call it.
Gas Station Proprietor: Alright. Heads then.
[Chigurh removes his hand, revealing the coin is indeed heads]
Anton Chigurh: Well done.
[the gas station proprietor nervously takes the quarter with the small pile of change he's apparently won while Chigurh starts out]
Anton Chigurh: Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.
Gas Station Proprietor: Where do you want me to put it?
Anton Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.
[Chigurh leaves and the gas station proprietor stares at him as he walks out]


What's going on in the Coen Brother's "No Country for Old Men" (A) is an exploration of moral codes. Well, firstly, it's a Western in the classical sense, because it's set in a time and place (Texas in 1980) where the landscape was starting to change, both physically and morally. Secondly, it's a Horror film in the sense that Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is as unstoppable as Jason from Friday the 13th-he even looks like him. And it's a Horror film in that the new world that Chigurh inhabits and thrives in is not a world that Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by no one other than Tommy Lee Jones.) wants to maintain order in.

The story, in brief: Llewelyn Moss,(Josh Brolin) a man less polite company than I would be tempted to call, "Tornado Bait", stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug exchange gone bad near the Texas-Mexico border in 1980. (Trust me, the date is important.) He tracks down the last man standing and recovers two million dollars from this fellow's dead body. That night, worried about leaving any loose ends, he heads back to the badness to make sure no one else saw him. (And in an act of -guilt, perhaps? He brings a jug of water with him to quench the thirst of a Mexican man dying in one of the trucks.) Sure as shit, Moss' conscious trumps his common sense, and a 4x4 with a couple of gunmen show up right when he does. This sets a chain of events in motion which brings up Chigurh in search of the money that Moss has taken.

Where it differs from your standard "Where's the money?" type thriller is in the way the characters interact, and behave according to their values. Moss' values not only destroy him, they destroy his wife. Sheriff Bell comes to realize that a world with people like Chigurh in it has no place for him. Or, to be more precise, given that his values dictate that he place his life in defense of others, death at the hands of someone like Chigurh would make his sacrifice worthless. Then there's Chigurh...

Chigurh is not evil: he's a person who knows that eventually the choices he makes will kill him, and until then, he will continue to live and to take risks until such a time as his choices lead to death. That he is a killer is secondary to the fact that he allows chance to bring him to his destinations, and allows the universe to guide him. He is the ultimate bad ass in that he is incapable of stopping because that would limit his choices. He is a killer because no one can stop him until they stop him forever (illustrated by the random car crash at the end of the movie), and at that point it hardly matters.

He is a human being without fear, who makes choices without fear and lives through their consequences. He is alive because it is not his time to die. Moss doesn't understand this, and pays the price: his initial survival should have been enough to prove to him that the gift Chigurh offered wasn't idle: he respected Moss' ability to choose enough to allow him to save his wife's life, and rejecting that was essentially making the wrong call on the coin. When Chigurh came for the wife, she died most likely because of her refusal to choose. "I got here just like the coin," he says when she tells him that he doesn't have to do a thing he'll do - he lets chance guide him, and his actions are the call of the toss. He may never lose, but he always chooses.



Stardust (B+) It's a fantasy adventure for people (and by people) who hate fantasy adventures. Which puts it closer into 'The Princess Bride' territory than 'Harry Potter' territory. There's a Terry Gilliamesque 'Time Bandits' feel to it as well. On paper, it's got the all the standard fantasy tropes; schlub (Charlie Cox) wanders into magical world, finds Pixie Dream Girl (Claire Danes, sportin' a pretty good British accent), goes on trip through magical world with her back to England. Meanwhile, both an evil witch, sorry, I mean, Evil Witch played by Michelle Pfeffer, and three Evil Princes are on the warpath for the Dream Girl.

Pretty good, especially since director Matthew Vaughn keeps original writer Neil Gaiman's Very British Whimsy in check with the asides and throwaway gags. ( Transformed girl looking in awe at her new cleavage, dead princes popping up to groan in disbelief, etc.) Robert DeNiro has a cameo as an effete flying ship captain which is okay, but I can't help thinking someone like Stephen Fry would've been a better casting choice.



Hot Rod (C+) Affable dumb comedy by the 'Lazy Sunday' guys. It works only because of the random bits of business they throw into the film. (Deliberately cheesy 80's soundtrack, random Asian guy-named Anderson?- throwing flyers around, then dancing for the camera.) Mindless and fun.