No Country for Old Men

I just got a new job as a hostess at Swanky Uptown Restaurant so I'm pretty busy nowadays. (Yes, I know I could do much better things with my degrees, blah blah thanks a lot for the support Mom. Also, where are my damn footslaves when I need them? 7 hours every other day of standing on hard wooden floors is really painful.) Sexy Englishman & I managed to fit in the movie on Monday, though. I like torture movies & lots of killing but this movie is ridiculous. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is clearly an absolute psychopath. Not to mention his crazy-ass Beatle haircut, possibly the worst hair I've ever seen (including on real people). He does an amazing job of portraying someone on a completely different wavelength from the rest of us, who enjoys killing just for the hell of it. He leaves almost no one in his path un-butchered. The emptiness in his eyes is almost as horrifying as his favorite, though not only, murder method. He carries around a pneumatic cattle air gun which shoots a bolt several inches forward before retracting. So when he puts it on someone's forehead, it's like shooting them in the head without the messy backsplatter or ear-shattering noise. It's awful.

At first, I thought Llewelyn Moss was an asshole for robbing dead bodies of their guns & suitcase of money. But as he tried his damnedest to get away from the pursuing Chigurh, I found myself cheering for him. Tommy Lee Jones is laconic as the sheriff on whose territory most of the murders happen, & Woody Harrelson has a nice little cameo as an assassin. I thought Mrs. Moss was hilarious, almost a caricature of a redneck wife, but she became sympathetic by the end too.

Do not, I repeat DO NOT, see this movie if you're sensitive to blood or murder. I kept squeaking in fright & so did our other friend. She was so scared she spilled a giant soft drink on her boyfriend right at the beginning. (It starts with a pneumatic air gun murder.) I had to hide my eyes at a couple parts & even though I liked the movie overall, it was incredibly grisly. If you can stomach all that, it's a really good movie. It made me think about what money can make people do & how easy it is to start sliding down that slippery slope.