A lot of positive reviews about “The Old Men Are Not A Place” has made this Coen Brothers thriller one of the main contenders for becoming one of the most successful films at the 2008 Oscars. As a result, the picture was presented in eight nominations, receiving four of them. In particular, film academics awarded her the award for Best Film, Best Supporting Actor, Director and Adapted Screenplay. In this article we will tell the plot of the picture, as well as about the actors who performed the main roles.
Plot
In the reviews of "The Old Men Here Does Not Matter" you can find a large number of enthusiastic opinions about the famously twisted plot of this tape. The film begins with a description of the wild and desert landscapes of West Texas in the summer of 1980. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell talks about the recent changes in his region. Crime is growing, and bandits are becoming more inhuman and cruel. This is a cross-cutting theme for an elderly person, which remains central throughout the picture.
The next hero of the movie "Old Men Have No Place" with which the viewer meets, becomes a welder Lewellin Moss. He returned from the Vietnam War, now hunts for antelopes, finding corpses and an abandoned pickup truck in the desert. These are the consequences of a shootout involving drug dealers. One of them is still alive, he asks to get drunk, but Moss has no water with him. He sets off in pursuit of the last survivor, soon finding him dead with a bullet in his stomach and two million dollars in a suitcase.
Moss takes the money, but he is constantly tormented by remorse, so he goes to the place of reprisal, taking water with him. However, someone had finished off that wounded drug dealer with a shot in the head. And the Mexican bandits approaching Moss . He miraculously escapes persecution, but the abandoned car is calculated by the sheriff and ruthless killer Anton Chigur, whom the Americans hired. Arriving at the place, Chigur takes away the direction finder from the gangsters from the bug left in the suitcase with the money, and then kills them.
On the run
For security reasons, Moss sends his spouse to his mother, and he hides in a suburban motel. He leaves the suitcase in the ventilation duct. Chigur arrives in his trailer, finds telephone bills, and then begins to travel around the neighborhood, trying to get on the track of the lighthouse.
He managed to get ahead of three Mexicans, who were also hired to search for the missing money. Feeling something was amiss, Moss does not return home, renting an adjoining motel room. Moreover, he manages to collect the money while Chigur deals with the Mexicans who were ambushed.
On the border with Mexico
Moss moves to a motel on the border with Mexico. Only there he guesses about the "bug" shortly before the next appearance of the killer. The fight on the night street ends with the accidental killing of a passing driver and serious injuries for both shooters. Moss is hiding with money, throwing his suitcase into a ditch near the border. He goes to improve health in Mexico. Chigur himself treats wounds using stolen medicines.
Experienced mercenary Carson Wells arrives at the hospital to operate Moss, who is tasked with stopping the freaking Figure. He is trying to persuade Lewellin to return the money, in return promising protection from the killer, but to no avail. Moss later changed his mind, but Carson did not answer his call, since by that time he had already been killed by Chigur. The killer threatens to kill the wife of the protagonist if he does not get the money back. But a Vietnam veteran is not going to give up.
Denouement
In the film "The Old Men Are Not Here" the plot in the finale unfolds completely unexpectedly. The sheriff finds Moss's wife, who is reluctant, but still agrees to accept his help.
Meanwhile, the recovered welder returns to America with the money, agreeing to see his wife in El Paso. The sheriff is in a hurry there, but Mexican bandits are ahead of him, taking advantage of the talkativeness of Carla’s mother.
The money that Lewellin hides again in the ventilation takes Chigur. The sheriff who has arrived at the site sees an open grill, but no longer finds anyone in the room. He leaves, deciding to retire and resign. In the finale, Chigur arrives at the gangster who hired Wells and kills him, and then gets to the mansion Carla Jean, who buried her mother, talking about the promise Moss made to her account. To a depressed woman, he offers to decide his fate by tossing a coin. She refuses, stating that the final decision will still remain with him. Anton states that his opinion coincided with the “opinion” of the coin, leaving the mansion, carefully inspecting the soles.
The film ends with the scene of a traffic accident in which Chigur falls. Having tied his broken arm with a shirt, he hides.
Josh Brolin
In the film "The Old Men Can't Be Here" (2007), actor John Brolin played the main role of the Vietnam War veteran Lewellin Moss. He is one of the Coen brothers' favorite artists who starred in their films "Long Live Caesar!" and Iron Scramble.
For the image of Dan White in the drama of Gus Van Sant, “Harvey Milk” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but could not win the statuette.
Among his other outstanding works, one can recall the dramatic catastrophe of Baltazar Kormakur “Everest”, the crime thriller Ruben Fleischer “Gangster Hunters”, the thriller “Denis Villeneuve”.
Javier Bardem
Most of the positive reviews about the film "Old Men Can't Take Place" are due to the success of the Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who received the Academy Award for the role of Anton Chigur.
In the movie, this cult artist of our time played dozens of roles. He was born in the Canary Islands, and began his career in 1990 in Bigas Luna's erotic drama "The Age of Lulu". In addition to the Academy Award in his career, there is another significant achievement: in 2010 he received the Cannes Film Festival prize for best actor in the drama Alejandro González Iñárrita Beauty.
The character Anton Chigur from "The Old Men Do Not Have a Place" soon became a cult. He is regularly included in the ratings of the best villains in the history of cinema. In the film, he was remembered by many for his old-fashioned hairstyle, during the creation of which the make-up artist of the Cohen brothers took as a basis the fashion of the 60s and the appearance of the crusaders. As a weapon, he constantly uses a pneumatic gun designed to slaughter cattle. It is important that this hero is psychologically reliable. Having examined the characters of several hundred films, psychiatrists decided that Chigur was the most realistic of psychopaths.
Tommy Lee Jones
Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in this tape is played by American actor Tommy Lee Jones. In addition to this film, where he plays a sensible and unflappable sheriff, he also starred in Andrew Davis’s detective thriller The Fugitive, Barry Sonnenfeld’s comedy sci-fi thriller Men in Black, and Stuart Byrd’s action movie Servants of the Law. For his role in The Fugitive, he received an Academy Award.
At the same time, there are completely different roles in his career. In Andrew Davis’s adventure thriller Under Siege and Joel Schumazher’s superhero action movie Batman Forever, Jones appears as an eccentric villain.
Woody harrelson
Another vivid image was created by the American actor Woody Harrelson, who played the bounty hunter Carson Wells.
This is one of the brightest contemporary actors, who has already been nominated for an Oscar three times, but has not received a single figurine. Closest to the coveted award, he found himself after roles in the biographical drama by Milos Forman “The People Against Larry Flynt”, the drama by Oren Moverman “The Messenger”, and the comedic drama by Martin McDonagh “Three Billboards on the Border of Ebbing, Missouri”.
Reviews
In the reviews of "The Old Men Here Does Not Matter", viewers most often began to argue about the essence of the picture. Despite the fierce debate, most agreed that this is really an outstanding work of the Coens.
It is believed that this is their most significant contribution to the development of modern cinema. At the same time, just because of the allegorical plot, many did not understand the tape.
In fact, the meaning of "Old Men Here" is not easy to explain. This is a philosophical parable in which the two main antagonists (Chigur and Moss) symbolize two different generations, exactly creating a prototype of the hero of his time. Chigur himself is a superman in the Nietzschean understanding of this meaning, devoid of emotions and ideas about morality.
Critics in their reviews of “The Old Men Have No Place” noted that if Chigur is a symbol of the future and Moss is the present, then Sheriff Bell is the past. He is not able to withstand the shocks surrounding him, which is why he is constantly in prostration. He does not understand the motives surrounding the criminals, constantly finding himself a few steps behind.
Chigur, symbolizing the future, personifies the desire for evolution, progress and modification. He, although he was badly battered, but it was he who, as a result, remains the only hero who got out of all the troubles.
Despite part of the dissatisfied reviews of "The Old Men Are Not A Place" (2007), in which the creators of the picture were accused of romanticizing murders and crimes, in reality this is a very vital tape. A philosophical parable that clearly illustrates the course of our time.