No Country for Anyone

No Country for Old Men is the latest Coen brothers film and was recently awarded four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Film. Set in rural Texas, a hunter discovers a drugs deal gone wrong and rather than hand the money over to the police, makes off with it himself pursued by the psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chigurh is cool, calculating, and frighteningly evil, and mechanically dispatches his victims one after the other with a tank of compressed air and a hose. The innocent, the friendly, the helpful and the bystander are all shot, often at the toss of a coin. The film is bleak and unremittingly hopeless. We sympathise most with Police Chief Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who is powerless and despairing in the face of Chigurh's violence. "This country's hard on people, you can't stop what's coming." And although we long for God to intervene he never does. "I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come into my life somehow. And he didn't. I don't blame him." Either God could intervene and doesn't, or he is powerless. Like many before it, this film raises questions about evil: who are we waiting for? Is there anyone who can save us from this apocalyptic onslaught? If God exists, why doesn't he do something? Perhaps most hauntingly, this film reminds us of the limitations of human justice in the face of gratuitous evil.