No Country for Me

No Country for Old Men left Chuck and his wife disappointed

by Chuck Nice

The other night I'm sitting on the sofa with my wife and, in a very fetching voice, I asked what she'd like to do. She responded, "Let's watch a movie." Just for the record, when it's after 10 p.m. and the kids are asleep, the question "What would you like to do?" is the nicest way of saying "Let's do it like drunken co-eds in the back of an SUV." But a movie seemed like a suitable replacement for hot prison relations, so I searched the On Demand menu for something we could both enjoy. That something turned out to be No Country for Old Men. After a brief argument, I convinced her that it must be a great movie because it was critically acclaimed and Javier Bardem won an Oscar...how could we go wrong? Well, the town of Wrong now has two new residents, because wrong is exactly where we went.

By most accounts this was a great movie. The performances were sublime, the directing was genius, and the cinematography was superb. But my wife and I had one annoying little problem with the plot of the movie. The opening scene takes place in the desert, where Llewlyn (Josh Brolin) happens upon the aftermath of a drug deal that went about as well as a relationship with Madonna. Everyone involved, including the dog, is shot and killed, with the exception of one man whose dying request was a drink of water. After Llewlyn callously denies him a drink, he leaves him to die in the desert heat and follows a trail that leads him to two million dollars in drug money. His natural reaction is to take the money, something I think many people would do. But what I don't think they would do is catch a case of conscience and leave their bed (in the middle of the night) to take that dying man a drink. And, of course, it is this guilt-ridden act of kindness that allows the drug dealers access to Llewlyn's identity, and they relentlessly hunt him down. Could you think of a more morally convoluted action? Here's someone who happens upon several dead bodies, doesn't report it to the authorities, and steals two million dollars in drug money but returns to the scene of the crime to play candy striper to a man who was already French kissing the grim reaper? WTF! You have got to be kidding me! It annoyed us both so badly that we couldn't enjoy the rest of the movie. Now before you go thinking I'm stupid, I know that the writer inserted this mechanism to make you feel that gnawing prick in your gut throughout the entire film. Why did he go back? My problem is that he went back hours later to give a drink of water to a stranger who was clearly going to die anyway. Unless that water was bottled by Ponce De Leon, I don't think it would have done much for the poor bastard. Both my wife and I were really ticked off by this character's actions and I think I know why.

My wife is an extremely moral person, the type who won't run a red light at 3 a.m. even though she's been sitting at the intersection for five minutes. However, I am moral because I know I'm the guy who'll get caught. When I was a young man my mother explained to me that we (my family) were the type of people who can't do wrong and prosper. "Some people can do wrong and get by," she would say. "We're not them." So if I'm going to do something wrong, man, I'm going all the way. As the saying goes... Don't go to hell in cramp. If you're going to do it...damn it, do it! Don't half-ass crime, especially if you're otherwise a generally decent person. Either be a criminal or be a good person. My wife and I are alike in that manner; however, I'm just a little flawed. If either one of us found two million dollars, we would turn it over to the police. She would surrender it all...I would surrender what was left after one glorious night of partying...and I'd agree to work off the difference.