Analysis of 'No Country for Old Men'

‘No Country for Old Men’ was produced in 2007 starring, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin. This film is created by having a lot of mystery and darkness about it. From the very beginning of the movie there is a chase and this chase carries on throughout the entire film between numbers of different characters, all for different reasons that are linked together. In the film there is a hunter that stumbles across a shoot-out between two groups of people in the middle of the waste land. A Deputy Sheriff that is looking for the hunter, he goes to see his wife and tries to follow him to where he is running too. The criminal is also after the hunter for what he has got with him, which he stole when he was out in the desert.

This screen grab is the beginning of 'No Country for Old Men’; it is an extreme long shot of a waste land scape. There are multiple types of extreme long shots of different areas of this land, throughout the narrative speaking from an unknown character that you don’t see or hear from at all in the film, the shots pan from one to the other to show the audience that there is no one out here, it is a deserted. In one shot all the movement you can see is the wind blowing the sand around, this is the only movement and is very affective. In this shot all you can see is a broken fence in front of the shot, this is showing that there isn’t very much security in this large place. In the distances you can see a mountain; this shows how far away the actual shot goes to.

This second shot, is still in the waste land setting, however there are now two characters that have been introduced. They are walking towards what looks like an old police car; the character dressed all in black has his hands behind his back, he looks like he has been arrested by the officer that is escorting him to the car. This makes the audience want to know what this character has done to be arrested, and makes them want to keep watching and find out. This shot is a long shot because the audience can see the two characters, the car and into the distance with the road at the side. This creates a sense of concern that the officer is alone with the prisoner. Is he dangerous and what will happen while they are alone together.

This third shot is a close up of an officer on the phone; he looks at ease and is obviously unaware that there is another character coming up behind him. The second character in this shot is dressed all in black, while the officer is dressed in quite a bright natural colour. This instantly says to the audience that the character in black isn’t the good guy. His face isn’t shown in the shot so that tells us that they don’t want you to know who he is just yet. The setting of this show seems to be some sort of office, maybe it is the station. In a shot before this, the officer had arrested the mysterious guy, however we still do not get a clear image of what he looks like or who he is.

The last shot I have chosen is a bird’s eye, close up of a pair of hands and handcuffs. We can’t see the person, but we can see that they have been injured. There are cuts all around his wrists, there is also blood on the handcuffs. So the audience automatically think that the character has cut themselves by the handcuffs. By looking at the hands you can tell that these hands belong to a male, this is because they big and rough looking. If it was a female then they would be smaller and thinner looking. The character is reaching to turn the tap on, so this tells us that he is going to get rid of any traces of blood and clean himself up. It makes the audience think, has he done this before, because he seems to know what he is doing and is very good at covering it up.