No Country for Old Men

Have you seen this movie? Set in a small Texas border town and the surrounding countryside, the story follows a psychopathic killer's efforts to track down a brief case of $2 million dollars that was lifted by a local trailer park resident who happened upon the scene of a massive drug deal gone wrong. The killer is played to harrowing effect by Javier Bardem (I think that's his name), who forces his victims to flip a coin and call heads or tales on their lives. The film will be remembered for its dark characters, brutal violence, and unorthodox plot. But particularly striking is the way the Coen brothers are able to integrate the landscape and geography of west Texas into the story in a way that makes you feel it is the only setting where a story like this could happen; the only place on earth that could provide a venue for a man like Bardem to blow up cars and trucks by stuffing gasoline-soaked rags into gas tanks after lighting them on fire. The only place where the murder weapon of choice is a air compression tank and hose with enough pressure to blow a quarter through the skull of an unsuspecting cattle rancher or gas station attendent. My wife is from west Texas and tells wonderful stories of her family's cars being stolen on a regular basis there. After their third car was stolen, the family resorted to physically chaining the car to a metal post cemented in the ground. Her father, awoke one night to the roar of a revving engine and a saw working its way through metal. He rushed outside with a loaded handgun which he kept under the bed only to see their van being towed out of the metal post by one man in a truck while his co-conspirator worked away at chopping the metal post with his hack saw. The post broke and the truck tore off down the street leaving a trail of smoking, screeching tires. The family van already had a driver inside when the post broke and the sawman jumped in as Jasmine's dad fired shots in the air and watched helplessly as the van sped away. West Texas is harsh, lawless country where a man is forced to rely on no one but himself to survive. Just hope Javier Bardem is after you with his air canon when you visit.