A series of unfortunate events unfold in a small desert community when a drug deal near the Rio Grande goes sours, bringing a dark whirlwind into their lives.Adapted from the novel by famed American author, Cormac McCarthy, the Coen brother’s screenplay is tight, authentic and really able to utilize a story with three leads.
While more often than not, voiceover seems forced, the narration that opens this film does a wonderful job of setting everything that follows in motion.
The direction is flawless—a perfectly realized tapestry of Americana. The Coen brothers guide the story in a way that maintains a constant tone of dreadful uneasiness. Through this timepiece crime caper, they provide a sense of change in our culture towards violence and greed.
Roger Deakin’s cinematography captures the America landscape unlike any other. His expansive shots of vistas are breathtaking, while his compositions are intimate, capturing the early eighties southwestern production design with great precision.
I have this wacky theory that all Coen Brother movies are comedies. Even the ones that aren't comedies (this theory was proven wrong with No Country for Old Men). But even one of their bleakest films, Blood Simple, in all its revenge fueled violence and mayhem, still plays out like a Ealing Studios comedy. To fully defend my stupid (and most likely wrong) theory I'd have to give away too much of the plot, but basically every character in the movie thinks they know exactly what is going on despite the fact that they are, in reality, completely clueless to what is really happening. This all comes to a head in a final scene that if it wasn't so edge-of-your-seat, nail-bitingly tense, you'd laugh out loud. Or maybe not, what do I know?
