No Country for Old Men

8/15/25:

It was on Prime, I noticed, so I watched it again. This might be the second or third time that I've seen it. As far as I can recollect, I never reviewed it. Perhaps this shouldn't be a review either.

The movie has a few themes, among which seems to be the degradation of society. It was made in 2007-ish, so it isn't what you'd call an old movie, but not new either. The setting is in 1980, so the setting may be seen as a good deal into the past. So whatever is being said about 1980, it is even more so today.

It has been included in the National Film Registry as culturally significant. That is unfortunate. For being included thusly, it doesn't say much for our culture.

One thing I wanted to write about it... Some folks write this as a hero versus villain story. In my opinion, there IS no hero in this film. There is no redemption of any kind. No defense of values or beliefs. In that sense, I'd say that there is no nobility to it at all. It is very degrading on many levels.

If the character who finds drug money and gets tracked by a psychopath is a hero, then perhaps it may show some sort of degradation in the society that could see his behavior as heroic. The hero gets himself and a number of other people killed. He wants to get rich by stealing another crook's money. He is a crook himself. Not a hero. That is the thing I wanted to say.

1/11/24: Update to 9/30/23 post:

One more thought that I had about this post, which was made just a week before the Hamas massacre in Israel on Oct 7th 2023. It was that the country I'm living in could become unlivable, and it was because of things like this character portrayed in that movie.

But I had no idea it would play out the way it did. I don't own a crystal ball. But you can see the general drift of events. So the massacre was all but inevitable. More events like it are all but inevitable too, unless something changes.

I still haven't seen the movie. Just enough to determine the character being portrayed. An evil character. You have to ask, why would the POTUS make the same kind of characters into a protected class? He has, you know.

No Country For Old Men Shows Why There Can Be No Compromise With Evil Like Hamas https://t.co/iaZMoZ44IG

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) January 11, 2024

end update: The original post is directly below:



This movie came up in conversation recently. I was thinking about it in terms of what the world is coming to. But there are those who think differently from that. I'd say that one reaction (on Youtube) is just another possible reaction of many possible reactions to what this movie is about. By the way, I have not seen the movie.