FILM REVIEW OF "TAKERS" (2010)

“Lockdown” director John Luessenhop’s super-charged, criminal heist thriller “Takers” (*** out of ****) derives its premise and some of its best scenes from other top-flight Hollywood cops and robbers movies. First, “Takers” is set in Los Angeles where Michael Mann made his 1995 classic heist thriller “Heat” with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Val Kilmer. In “Takers,” a quintet of GQ criminals steals what they want when they want it with the least amount of damage. Thoroughly professional to the hilt, these guys live by a code. Second, although clearly inspired by the slickly done Michael Mann epic, Luessenhop helms this stylist thriller as if he spent his every waking hour watching William Friedkin’s landmark “To Live and Die in L.A.” Clocking in at 107 minutes, “Takers” never sacrifices its momentum for anything. Luessenhop’s editor, Armen Minasian of “RoboCop 2” and “Kiss the Girls,” literally slashes the action together. Something is constantly happening. Walk out on this nail-biter and you’ll miss a lot of action even if you’re gone for less than 60 seconds. Luessenhop pares everything down to the bare essentials. Indeed, Zoe Saldana's role looks like it was whittled down to a couple of scenes with little for her to do. Unfortunately, characterization beyond wardrobe changes suffers. Nevertheless, the action burns up the screen, particularly a nimble foot chase that imitates a similar chase from the first Daniel Craig Bond movie “Casino Royale.” Third, Luessenhop stages a noisy but realistic gunfight in the confines of a motel suite that looks like a tribute to Ridley Scott’s L.A.-based crime caper “True Romance.” Mind you, “Takers” ups the ante; the bullets punch big holes in the walls in this shoot-out, and nobody knows who is blasting away at whom on the other side. Finally, a three-way, Sergio Leone/Quentin Tarantino style showdown caps the action at an airport where the cops and robbers face off. Laden with surprises, “Takers” emerges as a gripping heist thriller with enough cool-looking combat to compensate for the dearth of characterization.

Jamaican-born Gordon Jennings (Idris Elba of “Obsessed”) heads up an elite gang of twentysomething criminals that consists of former car thief John Rahway (Paul Walker of “Running Scared”), tattoo-clad, jack-of-all-trades construction engineer A.J. (Hayden Christensen of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith”), and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy of “Seven Pounds”) and Jesse Attica (Chris Brown of “Stomp the Yard”) who handle C-4 explosives like wizards. During the first scene, Luessenhop establishes the cool expertise of Jennings and company under tension when they execute a flawlessly timed robbery at the Federal California Bank in broad daylight in downtown Los Angeles. They assemble at the high-rise bank in separate disguises and then suit up in masks and body armor with assault weapons. A female bank employee trips a bank alarm during the hold-up. Calmly, Rahway escorts her courteously to a nearby phone where he orders her to call a local TV station and report a robbery in progress. Naturally, an eager TV news crew responds and lands their news helicopter atop the skyscraper helipad where the bank is located. The news reporter believes she has a scoop when the security guard gives them clearance to land. As it turns out, A.J. is masquerading as the security guard. He pulls his pistol and forces her, her news camera man, and the pilot down on their bellies. While the Los Angeles Police Department assembles in the parking lot, the other four members of his team pile into the chopper. A.J. flies the chopper off to a landing site not far away. After blowing up the helicopter to destroy any clues, the quintet separate without anyone knowing anything about them. These guys live the high life and toast each other at Jake’s bar.

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing because one of their former colleagues, Daryl Rivers (rapper-producer Tip "T.I." Harris), who was wounded during a robbery four years ago, is released on good behavior. The gang has since cut off contact with Daryl, a.k.a. ‘Ghost,’ and they are surprised when he shows up at Jake’s bar. As it turns out, Ghost’s girlfriend Rachel Jansen (Zoe Saldana of “The Losers”) has taken up with Jake, so bad blood exists between Jake and Ghost. Gordon and the others fear that after they give Ghost his cut from his last job that he may inform on them to the authorities. Instead, Ghost brings them the blueprints for a daring armored car robbery that could yield a $20-$30 million payday. Initially, the gang is suspicious. They don’t know if they can trust Ghost, but he brings them a sweet deal. The chief drawback is they must stage the heist in less than a week. A.J. performs the leg work and convinces Gordon that the job is something that they can do. Little do they know that Ghost has gotten the idea from an outfit of ruthless L.A. based Russians. The Russians think they are in cahoots with Ghost, but Ghosts plans to use them as a means of exacting sweet revenge on the protagonists. The armored car robbery in “Takers” is truly a piece of work and nothing like it has been done.

Director John Luessenhop and a trio of scenarists, Peter Allen, Gabriel Casseus, and Avery Duff, have turned an inventory of cop and robbers clichés into a lively little thriller. Although the slippery Ghost is the gang’s most obvious adversary, they have to elude and distract hot-tempered, rogue L.A.P.D. Detective Jack Welles (Matt Dillon of “Armored”) who is determined to capture them. Welles and his partner Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez of “Hostel”) are tenacious in their efforts to track down Gordon and company. Like “Heat,” the heroes in “Takers” have personal problems. Gordon has a crack head sister, Naomi (Marianne Jean-Baptiste of “Spy Game”), who creates problems for him when he least needs them. Luessenhop ramps up the suspense and tension throughout “Takers” so that neither the cops nor the robbers have an easy time of it. Complications galore arise to derail everybody’s best laid plans. “Takers” ranks as one of the best L.A.-based heist melodramas since “Heat.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BOONDOCK SAINTS 2: ALL SAINTS DAY (2010)

Sophomore scenarist & director Troy Duffy has revived Connor and Murphy MacManus for his ultra-violent but often riotous sequel “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day.” If you missed the original , these two Irish-American brothers who worked in a meat packing factory decided to arm themselves with a pair of silenced automatic pistols and imitate Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” antics. In their case, the MacManus twins believed God had summoned them to serve as his avengers. Moreover, a rogue FBI agent pulled strings on their behalf so Connor and Murphy with their sidekick Rocco could terminate 22 of Boston’s finest criminals. According to Duffy, this 118-minute sequel materialized only because the cult status of the original convinced Hollywood that a second opus was inevitable. Happily, most of the original cast have returned and Duffy’s pro-vigilante message remains intact. Everything that made the first film engaging recurs in “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day” (**** OUT OF ****), within the constraints of minimal realism. The controversial history of the original movie has something to do with the ten years that it took for Duffy to helm the sequel. Between the release of the original and sequel, a 2003 documentary about “The Boondock Saints” entitled “Overnight” showed what Duffy did to alienate Hollywood. Otherwise, “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day” qualifies as both an ambitious and entertaining sequel that springs several surprises. Two of the cherished original characters bite the dust. This time around nobody accidentally shoots a cat. If you liked the original, you may enjoy the sequel.

Duffy has the “Boondock” formula down to the bullet holes, but he has made a number of changes. Many involve the replacements for the original characters who don’t return. First, FBI Agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe) doesn't reprise his role. Second, super sexy, southern-drawling, FBI Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz of "Rambo") replaces Smecker and struts around stiletto high heels. Make no mistake, Bloom ranks as Smecker’s rival when she analyzes a crime scene. Third, although Rocco makes a cameo appearance, Dully replaces Rocco with a goon every bit as hilarious as Rocco. Indeed, Romeo (Clifton Collins, Jr., of "Crank 2") replicates Rocco in most respects, but he exhibits more discipline. Our heroes encounter this outlandish Mexican aboard the freighter that they take to cross the Atlantic. Fourth, Mafioso chieftain Concezio Yakavetta (Judd Nelson of “The Breakfast Club”) serves as the chief adversary this time, and Yakavetta commands an army of trigger-happy hoodlums. Audiences that saw the first “Saints” saga know that our heroes executed Concezio’s father in a courtroom.

Meantime, Duffy preserves other plotlines. The three Boston detectives play a more integral part in this sequel’s shenanigans. They fear that their role in aiding and abetting the MacManus twins in the last courtroom scene will come back to haunt them. Peripheral characters, such as the arms dealer and Doc, the barman with Tourette's syndrome who runs McGinty’s bar, reappear along with the Boston Chief of Police. Not only does Duffy recycle the best parts of the original, but he has also gone in and fleshed out the most enigmatic character for the original, II Duce (Billy Connolly), and furnished him with a back story. The back story concerns how II Duce as a youth named Noah who grew up to become a serial executioner after he saw his father murdered before his eyes. This subplot adds a whole new dimension to “The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day.”

Our Irish Catholic vigilante heroes have been living in a self-imposed exile in Ireland herding sheep and rolling their own cigarettes with their long-haired, bearded father (Billy Connolly) with whom they were reunited during the final quarter hour of “The Boondock Saints.” A beloved Catholic priest, Father Douglas McKinney (Dwayne McLean of “Charlie Bartlett”), has been brutally murdered in his own church, and the killer has framed the MacManus twins. Specifically, he imitated their ritual of shooting their victim in the back of the head and placing pennies on the eyes. Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery of “Powder”) and Murphy (Norman Reedus of “Hero Wanted”) cut off their shoulder-length locks and excavate their hardware. They return to their old stomping grounds and vow to kill anybody who had anything to do with the priest’s demise.

Initially, Bostonians are divided over the priest’s homicide. Half of Boston believes the MacManus twins iced the poor cleric, while the other half refuse to believe that their heroes would stoop to such sacrilege. Duffy uses the scenes involving the media to recap the Saints’ exploits from the first movie and their sudden disappearance after the courtroom shoot-out eight years ago. Meanwhile, Eunice wants to feed the hysteria and keep the MacManus twins on the front page until they can find who is at the bottom of the murder. Naturally, Eunice knows Connor and Murphy had nothing to do with the priest’s slaying. At the same time, the mob is incensed about the killing of the priest because it means that somebody wants the Saints back in town. The resolution of this mystery, which involves an enigmatic character called ‘the Roman’(Peter Fonda of “Easy Rider”) fame makes the final half-hour absorbing stuff.

“The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day” bears all the earmarks of the original: audacious gunfights, profanity galore, oddball characters, fractured time lines, and witty but politically incorrect dialogue. Duffy enjoys reversing the chronological order of events. An excellent example of his fractured time line occurs in the Chinese heroin massacre—about 35 minutes into the action--when the cops first investigate the slaughter at a heroin factory and then everything shifts into flashback mode before the massacre. The difference here is Duffy gives us a look at it from the perspective of an exploitation picture. In other words, he stages the shoot-out as if it were part of a 1970s era movie. Our cigarette smoking heroes are riding in a crate atop a fork-lift driven by Romeo. They perform incredible acrobatic feats as they plummet from the crate and then wield two guns a piece like Buffalo Bill to annihilate their adversaries. The film looks old and lacerated. The actual scene with our heroes experiencing a more realistic encounter with the villains ensues after their parody scene. Not surprisingly, the ending leaves everything open for another sequel. Altogether, anybody who calls Duffy a Tarantino clone doesn't have a clue about cinematic artistry and the depth of "The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day."

FILM REVIEW OF ''HARD RAIN'' (1998)

Scriptwriter Graham Yost had been so busy churning out tough-guy actioneers that it seemed only a matter of time before his creativity curdled. His previous efforts included a pair of trigger-happy John Woo shoot’em-ups “Hard Target” and “Broken Arrow” along with Jan De Bont’s careening epic “Speed.” Yost’s uncredited contribution to the sloppy Howie Long potboiler “Firestorm” changed nothing, but the prolific scribe appears really to have deep-sixed himself with the weather-beaten Morgan Freeman & Christian Slater thriller “Hard Rain” (** OUT OF ****), director Michael Salomon’s half-drenched drama about an armored car heist. The bad scenes outnumber the good ones, and the filmmakers let their characters wander around in a moral morass far too long before they expose their villainous or heroic characteristics.

Originally scheduled by Paramount Pictures for a 1997 release under the generic title “Flood,” “Hard Rain” capitalized on the success of disaster movies such as “Daylight,” with Sylvester Stallone, “Dante’s Peak,” with Pierce Brosnan, and the Tommy Lee Jones lava fest “Volcano.” When those disaster movies went belly up, the producers of “Hard Rain” treaded water. Moreover, since its earlier release date, “Hard Rain” has undergone more than a title change. Not only have the credits been juggled, but the script also apparently has been rewritten. Morgan Freeman (fresh from his box office success in “Kiss the Girls”) acquired top billing over co-star & co-producer Christian Slater.

Basically, “Hard Rain” is virtually a disaster itself. Yost’s uneven script appears the chief culprit. He swamps it with too many unlikely situations and some characters get way out of line. The concept of staging a heist during a devastating deluge must have seemed enticing when the producers pitched the premise. Indeed, the Yost script opens with an interesting predicament. Before “Hard Rain” lets up, you’ll feel tired of wading through yet another undistinguished semi-disaster/semi-crime caper flick. Altogether, “Hard Rain” showers its audiences with a wishy washy saga, suspicious characters, and a muddled sense of morality that rivals the Wesley Snipes & Woody Harrelson opus “Money Train.”

A rookie armored car guard, Tom (Christian Slater), has resigned from his construction job to work with his Uncle Charlie (Ed Asner of TV’s “Lou Grant”). As the film unfolds, Tom and Charlie are hauling about $3-million dollars of cold, hard cash from a Midwestern bank that flood waters are about submerge. As they try to leave town, they get stuck, and the flood rises over their ankles in the cab. Charlie radios the National Guard, and the two of them sit on the loot.

About that time, a band of thieves led by Jim (Morgan Freeman) show up. One of the villains, Kenny (Michael Goorjian) cuts loose, and they shoot it out. The scene is effective as well as eerie, with creepy spotlights blazing white-hot holes in the night skies. Goorjian gives a terrific performance as an idiot henchman who Jim has brought along because Jim promised his father he’d care of Kenny. Anyway, Charlie dies from a bullet wound, but Tom manages to escape. Resourceful guy that he is, Tom drags off the bags of the loot. The villains are always several steps behind the heroes and heroines in “Hard Rain” in hot (or as the case is ‘wet’) pursuit.

Meanwhile, the sheriff (Randy Quaid) has been evacuating the flooded town. It seems that he is serving out his last two weeks. Everybody believes the mayor sabotaged his re-election bid, because the sheriff had been in office far too long, twenty years too long. The sheriff tries to persuade an elderly couple, Henry (Richard Dysart) and Doreen (Betty White), to clear out of town before they drown. They’re determined to safeguard their store, so they are laying out bear traps when the sheriff intervenes. Dysart and White dredge up the only humor in the film as an incredibly grumpy couple. The only time you hear the “f--k” word in “Hard Rain” is as Henry reprimands Doreen for her outrageously bitchy behavior. TV’s “Golden Girl” White steals every scene as the suspicious, unrelenting spouse.

After he’s hidden the loot, Tom seeks refuge. He stumbles into a sandbagged church, and Karen (Minnie Driver) mistakes him for a looter. She decks him with a huge crucifix. Eventually, Tom regains consciousness and finds himself in jail. When he explains his predicament, the sheriff and his deputies leave him locked-up and go out to investigate. About that time, the guy manning the dam--Hank (Wayne Duvall)--has to open the floodgates and inundate the city with more water.

“Hard Rain” broadly resembles “Broken Arrow.” Substitute the stealth jet with an armored car along with John Travolta’s thief of nukes with Uncle Charlie’s scheme to steal the loot, and you have a clever but contrived variation. Add to the formula a heroine along the lines of the Samantha Mathis park ranger character, and you get Minnie Driver. She’s cast as an expert who restores stained glass church windows. She is so committed to preserving her stain-glass handiwork that she is willing to risk death by drowning.

“Hard Rain” bristles with a motley crew of characters. Nobody seems to represent who they really are. Yost exploits the natural disaster to bring out either the good or the bad in everybody. Randy Quaid’s sheriff exemplifies this as a veteran lawman that crosses over the line after two decades of wearing a badge. Morgan Freeman presents even a better example. He gives a deep, soulful performance, too, in a role he is clearly above in what he brings to what it lacks. Freeman’s Jim is an honorable thief. He neither triggered the accidental shoot-out that cost Uncle Charlie his life nor did he abandon the cretinous Kenny whose welfare he had been entrusted, but to say more would ruin the resolution.

Former photographer Michael Salomon keeps the pace trim with several vigorous, full-throttled, hell-bent action sequences. Nevertheless, he cannot rinse a script soaked with cliches. Initially, “Hard Rain” qualifies as a modern day version of Sergio Leone’s classic Spaghetti western “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” Tom hides the loot in a cemetery before Karen clobbers him and lands him in jail. The sheriff grows greedy and decides to split the $3-million booty among his deputies while Jim pursues Tom. Moreover, Jim and Tom form an uneasy alliance against the lawmen when it’s clear the sheriff has decided that they must die.

The best parts of “Hard Rain” are the action scenes. They rock. Literally, when guns are fired, the cameras shudder to heighten the violence. The gunshots (in a good sound system) burst in your ears like mortar shells. The jet-ski scene in the high school is fun. Obviously, the filmmakers are playing on the secret desire some moviegoers may harbor about a perverse wish to trash the halls of their high school. The sight of power boats crashing through stained glass windows and shattering them to hell and gone is rather exciting, too.

Sadly, the unpredictable characters undermine “Hard Rain.” When the characters decide which side of the law to support, you feel little sense of relief. The villains seem too sympathetic to truly hate. The entirely empathetic reasons for their actions make them sympathetic. “Hard Rain” exemplifies one of those rare movie misfires where the characters stimulate more interests than the plot.
If anybody in “Hard Rain” deserves kudos, production designer J. Michael Riva certainly does. Riva and his associates used a large, Palmdale, California, aircraft hanger where B-1 bombers were assembled to photograph the action. “Hard Rain” may whet your appetite. This slickly packaged, class-oriented disaster drifts too far from formula to qualify as an exemplary Christian Slater movie like “True Romance,” “Broken Arrow,” or “Kuffs.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''STREETFIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI" (2009)

This above-average distaff martial arts actioneer about a daughter’s revenge for the murder of her long-suffering father boasts Geoff Boyle’s spectacular cinematography and a sturdy cast, particularly with charismatic Neal McDonough as the dastardly chief villain and Michael Clarke Duncan as his right-hand man. Martial arts fight choreographer Dion Lam of “Exit Wounds” and “The Matrix Reloaded” stages several exceptional hand-to-hand combat scenes involving wire work. As the heroine Kristia Kreuk is convincing here as Chin-Li and handles herself well in the fight sequences. She possesses an expressive countenance,and this gives "Streetfighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" (*** out of ****) its heart and drive. Moreover, as Chin-Li, our heroine changes over the course of the story so that she emerges as a round rather than a flat character. “Exit Wounds” director Andrej Bartkowiak never lets the action stall out during its trim 96 minutes. Of course, the Justin Marks screenplay contains nothing but formula with the usual expository scenes for an origins story. A heroic heroine, ruthless villains, scenic locales, and a by-the-numbers crime empire building plot keep thing warm but rarely sizzling. Ostensibly, “Streetfighter” is a sequel to the Jean Claude Van Damme original.

The movie begins as an origins story with Chun-Li (Kristia Kreuk) talking about her youth in San Francisco. Her international businessman father Xiang (Edmund Chen of “Saigon Eclipse”) wants her to become a concert pianist. Eventually, the family relocates to Hong Kong, and her father teaches her Wushu while she practices the piano. Suddenly, one evening, criminals invade her house, and Xiang battles them until Balrog seizes young Chun-Lie and threatens to kill her. Bison (Neal McDonough of “Walking Tall”) and his men abduct Xiang. Later, Bison appropriates the Shadaloo Empire, the biggest crime syndicate in Asia. He has acquired his power and authority by having his assassin, Vega (Jaime Luis Gomez) decapitated the heads of all the crime lords in Bangkok. Bison has a grand scheme to lower property values in the Bangkok slums, buy up as much as he can, tear it down, and then rebuild it with luxurious housing for the affluent. Bison has no qualms about killing. He abducted Chin-Li’s father years ago and when she comes to Bangkok to straighten things out, Bison murders her father in front of her eyes. Previously, Bison had held Chun-Li's father captive for years and forced against his will to help develop his infamous plan.

Meanwhile, Interpol agent Charlie Nash (Chris Klein of “American Pie”) has pursued the elusive Bison through eleven major cities on four continents and only now comes close to catching him. He teams up with Bangkok Police Detective Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood of “Terminator: Salvation”) in the Gang & Homicide Division. While this is going on, Chun Lin is building a reputation as a successful concert pianist when she learns that her mother is ill. Eventually, Chun Li’s mother dies. The mother was an American and her father was Asian. Chun discovers a scroll in ancient Chinese. She looks for help in translating the document which she suspects will have something to do with her life. Our heroine takes the scroll with her and checks it out with her. The old lady observes, “This is not a letter, it is a light shining only upon you.” She advises Chun Li to travel to Bangkok and search for a man named Gen. Before she locates (Robin Shou of “Mortal Combat”) who gives her a brush course in defying gravity while decimating the dastards, Chun-Li lives in the streets, observes the crime-ridden slums first hand, and later interferes with a gang intent on beating up a helpless man. Principally, Gen shows Chun how to control her rage in a fight.

Not only does “Streetfighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” relate the story of our heroine’s humble beginnings, but the film also details the origins of the cruel villain. Son of Irish missionaries, Bison grew up as an orphan and stole fish from people in Thailand. Just to emphasize his evil, Bartkowiak and Marks show how Bison jettisoned his conscience. He does this by removing his infant daughter from his wife’s womb prematurely, killing his wife. This transferred his conscience into his daughter. Again, Bison is a first-rate bastard. Later, Bison’s thugs attack Gen while Chun-Li is away buying groceries and Balrog destroys Gen’s house with a RPG. Bison orders Vega to finish off Chun-Li, but he is surprised when Chun-Li whips Vega in a knock down, drag out fight, leaves the assassin hanging upside down over the side of a building. Chun-Li heads out to deal with Bison. She learns about a secret delivery of White Rose and determines to help Charlie Nash and Detective Sunee get Bison. Bison’s tentacles stretch to the police and Sunee is told to drop the case. Consequently, Charlie and Chun-Li take on Bison. The fight between Bison and Chun-Li is energetic and the outcome is nothing if not impressive.

Indeed, the producers tampered with the video game when they adapted it to the big-screen. For example, they removed the gloves that Balrog wore. Furthermore, they changed Chun-Li from strictly Chinese to Chinese-American. Producer Ashok Amritraj wanted the film “to stand on its own, not just for the gaming audience, but also as a movie.” “Streetfighter: The Legion of Chun-Li” with its formulaic plot doesn’t rank as a great martial arts film, but it is a good, exciting, action-packed saga with a surprise or two to keep you on your toes. As much as I like Jean Claude Van Damme’s “Streetfighter” (1994), “Streetfighter: The Legion of Chun-Li” tops the JCVD movie in every respect.

FILM REVIEW OF ''NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN''

“O’ Brother, Where Art Thou” co-directors Joel and Ethan Coen have created another classic melodrama with their modern-day western, road trip crime thriller “No Country for Old Men” (**** out of ****) about an inexorable killer and his quest to recover millions in illicit drug money. This art-house saga is a simple but powerful tale that involves four primary characters and a host of supporting characters. The action takes place in 1980. Indeed, if you use the zoom function on either your DVD or Blu-Ray player, you can spot the date on the phone bill. Moreover, if you look closely, you will see that the phone bill is $12.18. Ostensibly, the narrator, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, spends most of his time dwelling on the psychology of the characters as well as the changing times. “No Country for Old Men” isn’t your ordinary shoot’em up with cut and dried heroes and villains. The Coens have adapted the Cormac McCarthy novel and retained its pervasive sense of irony. Indeed, the moral universe of “No Country” is skewered because the villain survives, the protagonist dies, and the sheriff is so scared that he quits his job. Hired killer Anton Chigurh embodies the essence of pure evil. Despite the fact that he is a flesh & blood character, Chigurh could send shivers up the Terminator’s spine because he never gives up. Although the Coens may not realize it, Chigurh resembles another inexorable killer, the Lee Van Cleef gunman named ‘Angel Eyes’ in director Sergio Leone’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Like ‘Angel Eyes,’ Chigurh always finishes the job no matter what the consequences.

The action opens with a sheriff’s deputy arresting Chigurh (Javier Bardem of “Collateral”) and taking him in hand cuffs back to the jail. The unsuspecting deputy leaves the cuffed Chigurh sitting in a chair behind him while he phones the sheriff and discusses the unusual weapon that Chigurh uses to kill people. At the end of the conversation with the sheriff, the deputy promises his boss that “he has everything under control.” Meanwhile, behind him, Chigurh has slipped his cuffed wrists up under his thighs so that he can hold his hands in front of himself. Immediately, he attacks the deputy and they leave boot heel scuff marks galore on the floor while they struggle. Chigurh kills the deputy, confiscates a police cruiser, takes his peculiar weapon that consists of a slim canister, a hose, and a firing mechanism and pulls over a motorist, kills him with this odd weapon and steals his car. Later, at a Texaco gas station, Chigurh takes umbrage when the attendant asks him about the weather. This is quite a chilling scene as Chigurh stares at the attendant with his opaque eyes and forces him to play a game that involves flipping a coin. The attendant–like many characters–isn’t the brightest bulb in the factory and he can never get Chigurh to spell out the stakes riding on the coin flip.

The ostensible protagonist, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin of “American Gangster”), is hunting deer antelope in the desert and wounds one. Setting out to track down the wounded animal, Llewelyn comes across a scene straight out of Hell, a circle of trucks in the middle of nowhere and a number of bullet-riddled bodies strewn about them with a dead dog. Earlier, Moss saw a wounded pit bull limping away the high weeds. He finds one Mexican still alive but bleeding to death. Eventually, Moss figures out that one Mexican got away and he follows him to a ridge clad with two trees and finds the man dead with a satchel and a shiny automatic pistol. The satchel contains $2-million dollars in cash. When Moss returns home to his trailer, his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald of “Trainspotting”) is watching television. She inquires about the pistol but Moss brushes off all questions and threatens to take her to bed and have sex with her. She snorts derisively and quips, “That’ll be the day.” Later that night, Moss decides to return to the scene of the shooting because his conscience has gotten to him about the sole survivor that he found. Earlier, the dying Mexican had pleaded for a drink of water and Llewelyn brings a jug of cold water. No sooner has he set foot on the scene that some other Mexicans wheel up in a truck, slash his tires, pursue him and take shots at him. Moss dives into a river and the Mexicans dispatch a tenacious pit bull dog that leaps into the river and swims after him. Moss barely gets out of the river and clears his pistol before the dog lunges at him and he guns it down. You don’t often see dogs die in modern-day movies. By this time, Chigurh is on Moss’ trail and he rides out to his trailer park. He uses his cattle gun to blow the door lock off. In fact, this is Chigurh’s favorite method of entering a building; he blows the lock off the front door. However, Moss and his wife have already vacated the premises before Chigurh arrives. Chigurh searches the trailer and finds a telephone bill that contains all the phone numbers and he starts calling the numbers. Such is the weird attention to minute detail that the Coens show us the amount of the bill: $17.16.

Chigurh arrives on the scene with two other men later on, studies the site, shoots them and sets out to find the stolen money. “No Country” depicts his pursuit of Moss. These two guys are pretty obstinate characters. Neither one of them gives up, but Moss has no idea about the lengths to which Chigurh is committed to go. Moss sends Carla Jean off to Odessa, Texas, to be with her mother while he heads off in a different direction. Carla Jean has to quit her job at Walmart before she leaves to join her cancer-stricken mother. At the same time, Sheriff Ed Tom and his deputy investigate the killings and Ed Tom is clearly shaken by what he sees of this killer. In a border town, Moss and Chigurh shoot it out in the street after Chigurh storms the hotel where Moss had holed up and kills the night clerk. He wounds Moss, but Moss wounds him, too. Chigurh stages a car fire in front of a pharmacy to get the medical supplies to tend to his wounds, while Moss walks across the border at night and winds up in a Mexican hospital where he recuperates. Eventually, he makes it back across the border, but Chigurh catches up with him and kills him. Surprisingly, in a random act of violence, Chigurh’s car is struck by another car but he survives the accident. Two kids on bikes roll up and Chigurh buys a shirt from one of them to tie up his dislocated arm and then he vanishes as if he were never there. The film concludes with Tom Ed talking about a dream that he had about his father.

“No Country for Old Men” is a chilling tale of crime in the southwest about a killer who will stop at nothing to complete his mission. Nevertheless, this isn’t a run-of-the-mill action shoot’em up clever dialogue and cool characters. These are flesh and blood people who can and do receive wounds and have to take down time to recover. The scene where Chigurh obtains the medical supplies and then nurses himself in a motel room, swabbing his wounds, plucking out the buckshot pellets and injecting himself with shots is rather gruesome but reminiscent of Sylvester Stallone dressing his wounds in the original Rambo movie "First Blood." Nothing goes as it should in a regular crime melodrama. Good loses in the long run and evil wins out in the end. This movie justifiably received four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Bardem netted the Best Supporting Oscar for his killer.