And that’s the end of No Country For Old Men. Thanks for joining me. On Monday I will apparently be liveblogging Carry On Dick, which is pretty much the exact same film. I might as well just incrementally copy and paste what I’ve written here for it. Nobody would ever know. Anyway, follow me on Twitter if you like (I’m @StuHeritage). Now go to bed. It’s a school night.
And now the final scene. The final scene where Tommy Lee Jones mumbles about his dreams in a slightly thematically relevant way. And then you think something climactic's going to happen. And then it doesn't. I love the way this film ends, and I'll fist-fight anyone who disagrees with me.
And then his car is hit by a car. Out of nowhere. But it's OK. He's not dead - just massively wounded. On the downside that's probably the end of him in this film. But, ever the optimist, Bardem secretly gets excited at the prospect of getting his wound-tweezers out again. It's a happy ending for him, really.
Returning from the funeral of her mother, Macdonald is confronted with Bardem. He seems fairly interested in the idea of killing her, although she - to give her some credit - seems relatively opposed. So they reach a compromise, and Bardem flips a coin.
It's some world-class gossiping in this scene. Without wanting to be crass, they're both essentially going "I tell you the worst crime I ever saw" and the other one fights back with a story of his own. And then Jones's friend spoils it by telling a really long story about graphic bullet wound injuries. It's probably a step too far, to be honest.
And speaking of cats, Jones's Tour Of Moral Disappointment has taken him to the house of a friend; a friend who has a weird thing for cats. They talk about the world, and their ancestors, and the relative uselessness of law enforcers. And, what do you know, it sounds windy.
Jones hesitantly returns to the motel, perhaps hoping to run into someone who he can drone on about the state of the world to. However, he notices that the lock to Brolin's room has been shot out; and Bardem is waiting inside with a gun. It's a game of cat and mouse, but both parties think they're the cat.
And now we enter the part of the film entitled Tommy Lee Jones Tells Several Directionless Folksy Stories That Would Probably Reflect His Emotional Situation If He Wasn't So Bloody Incomprehensible.
Tommy Lee Jones goes to the Golden Sands, but he's 30 seconds too late. Brolin's dead at the hands of the Mexicans who Macdonald's mum blabbed to. Speaking of Macdonald, she's three hours too late.
Meanwhile, on Twitter:
Brolin's heading off to the Golden Sands motel, where the other resident is a slightly randy woman on a sunlounger. His plan is to give Kelly Macdonald the money, stick her on a plane, kill Javier Bardem and go out to meet her.
Javier Bardem's plan is to go to the Golden Sands motel, retrieve the money and kill Macdonald and Brolin.
Macdonald's plan is to jolly well get Tommy Lee Jones to give Brolin a ruddy good talking to.
My plan is to go to sleep as soon as this film finishes.
Kelly Macdonald's mother in this film is odd, isn't she? She looks like a 20-year-old dressed up as an old lady. She looks like Mrs Merton. And she's blabbing on about exactly where she's going to a Mexican drug lord. She is the worst.
Brolin has just dealt with a very polite man at a clothing shop. It's heartening to see that, even though the receptionists of this world have let their standards slide, there's still an element of good old-fashioned professionalism in this world.
And now we're back with Tommy Lee Jones, who remains fixated on reading out the worst possible human interest stories in the newspaper. He's basically a walking episode of The Wright Stuff.
And now, by a horrible coincidence, Bardem and Brolin are talking on the telephone. The best that Brolin can do, says Bardem, is to return the money and spare his wife's life. He's dead whatever, apparently.
Javier Bardem kills Woody Harrelson. Woody should have really listened to himself.
Harrelson finds the money. But Bardem finds Harrelson. He sits him down and watches him squirm with a gun pointed at his chest. And even then, Woody Harrelson tries to explain how evil Javier Bardem is. To Javier Bardem, the man who has a gun aimed at him. This, I feel, is overkill.
Tommy Lee Jones has gone to visit Kelly Macdonald. This is either to help her make Josh Brolin safe, or to just rattle off a load of folksy old anecdotes about all the horrible things he's seen. It's quite hard to tell.
That's pretty much all Woody Harrelson does. It's great. I hope he's like that all the time. "What would you like in your sandwich, Mr Harrelson?" "Let me tell you something about Anton Chigurh. That man is the devil incarnate".
Brolin wakes up in a Mexican hospital to find Woody Harrelson with a bunch of flowers. He's there to explain to Josh Brolin that Javier Bardem is evil. That's the same Javier Bardem who just shot a man through the throat. Again, the clarification is really useful here.
It's the scene where he performs self-surgery on his wounded leg. It's pretty much the part from The Terminator where he repairs himself, only with more icky bits where he digs around inside weeping sores with a pair of tweezers.
And here's Javier Bardem, blowing up a car just because.
Meanwhile, on Twitter:
Mexico looks much nicer than Texas, by the way. It's cleaner, the architecture's more interesting and better lit, and there are swarms of fat blokes ready to sing songs at anyone who doesn't happen to be copiously bleeding from their abdomen. I'd move to Mexico in a second.
And now Brolin, limping and covered in blood, is making his way to Mexico. He throws the briefcase over the fence, pukes up and then staggers through the border.
Bardem escapes. This is easily my favourite part of the entire film. But that's mainly because the stroppy motel receptionist gets murdered. If this film is about anything at all, I think it's probably about the poor customer service skills of hospitality staff in rural areas. There's probably a Wikipedia page about it somewhere.
Bardem investigates. But he wises up and leaps out of the way, just as Brolin fires at him.
Brolin hails a truck. The driver gets shot in the chest and head. Brolin tries to drive it away, but crashes into a car. He makes it look like an accident, so that Bardem will go and investigate.
Bardem shoots out the lock. It hits Brolin in the chest. Brolin fires. Bardem backs off. Brolin escapes. The receptionist is dead. Good. Brolin legs it.
Shadows at the foot of the door. Silence.
And waiting.
Brolin's in a separate motel now (but guess what? The receptionist is a bit arsey) and he's discovered the tracking device in the case. And, although he's being very silent and stoic about it, he's cacking his pants rotten. He tries calling reception to see if he was followed (but guess what? The receptionist was too much of a dick to answer), and now he's sitting on his bed with his gun, waiting.
Now we cut away to meet Woody Harrelson, in that weird scene where all he does is describe how evil Javier Bardem is. The sam Javier Bardem who's either murdered or threatened to murder someone in every single he's been in since the film began. But, hey, thanks for the clarification.
Having killed everyone, Bardem takes off his socks and flings them into the bathroom. Which doesn't seem like the sort of thing that an evil criminal mastermind would necessarily do. Obviously the police will visit the motel room, because it's full of dead bodies. And what are they going to find? Two big sacks full of sociopathic foot DNA, that's what. Rookie error.
Brolin's trying to fish his money out of the air duct. But Bardem is stalking him. He puts his air gun to the door and ... it's the wrong room. Bardem kills the people in there anyway, mainly because he's evil but also because they've got machine guns.
I'm not joking about the apple thing, by the way. Have you ever tried to keep an apple in your mouth for any length of time? It's like waterboarding yourself with saliva.
Bardem's proximity alarm is drawing him ever closer to the briefcase. Brolin, sensing danger, has jimmied together a sort of rudimentary weapon made of wire and tape. The sense of foreboding is crushing here.
If any of you ever want to become a professional liveblogger, here's a word of advice. Never try and eat a whole apple during an ad break. You will fail, and then have to liveblog quite a lot of a film with an apple in your mouth like a pig.
Brolin's spooked by the notion that he's about to be killed for his money, so he asks his taxi driver to take him elsewhere. And the taxi driver obliges, with minimal fuss. You know who'd do well to take a leaf out of that taxi driver's customer service skills? All receptionists in this film.
Brolin's taken his money to Le Motel Du Stroppy Receptionist, and he's hidden the money in an air duct. This is important.
And motel receptionists. Just once I'd like to see a film about a nice motel receptionist. One who washes and smiles and doesn't give off the vibe of someone who's literally just finished masturbating. Now, that film would be a masterpiece.
Meanwhile, on Twitter:
Trailer park receptionists are always so arsey, aren't they? I can't think of a film that had an even slightly sympathetic trailer park receptionist. If there's one character who truly deserves to die in No Country For Old Men, it's the arsey trailer park receptionist.
Incidentally, it sounds a bit windy.
The Coen brothers really like the name Llewellyn, don't they?
Things that just happened in this film:
* Javier Bardem has started the search for Josh Brolin, and killed a couple of people in the meantime because of the whole evil sociopath thing.
* Tommy Lee Jones loves his wife, rides a horse and has started the search for Javier Bardem.
And here's Josh Brolin again, playing the old 'You should get out of town, Kelly Macdonald, because it isn't safe here any more' line. We've all used that line immediately after we've found a massive briefcase full of money, right boys?
"What's the most you ever lost in a coin toss?" I dunno, the entire contents of my bowels?
You know, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Javier Bardem's character doesn't seem like that much of a good egg.
Here's the horrible scene from the trailer. The Friendo scene. The one that goes 'mumble mumble mumble Friendo mumble mumble OH GOD SOMEONE'S GOING TO DIE mumble mumble hyperventilate'.
Oh no! Where have the talking potato wedges gone? I'm borderline distraught about this.
Fortunately they're crap shots and they don't know how to drive a car any faster than about three miles an hour, because Brolin gets away. They've also run out of bulletproof dogs, which in retrospect is probably an oversight. First rule of being a baddie - get a good car and a load of armoured dogs. Everyone knows that.
Josh Brolin is a good man, which is why he's just gone back to give that obviously dead man some water. But someone's beaten him to it. They want their money back and, in one of the film's tensest moments, they're slowly coming to get him.
Brolin's gone back home to lovely Kelly Macdonald, who clearly loves him because she doesn't mind that he stays out all day and then threatens to have sex with her in a threateningly jokey way. That's what love is, isn't it?
So here's something I didn't think through – when I'm doing these liveblogs, I mostly have to rely on what I can hear because I'm too busy typing. But this film has been very silent so far. I can't describe the plot based on what I hear. "It sounds a bit windy". "Now it's getting a bit windier". "Someone just grunted". It'd be rubbish.
Anyway, Josh Brolin's just found a massive briefcase full of money. That's probably quite important.
Brolin's found the busted drug deal in the middle of the desert. And the man in the van who keeps whining on about how thirsty he is. He's going to die. This is not a film for chatty people.
Updated
And here's Josh Brolin; a greedy nearly-mute with a horrible moustache who can't shoot animals properly. He also likes following dogs around. He really likes following dogs around. If Josh Brolin didn't like following dogs around, the film would be about three minutes long. If anything, this film should be called No Country For Men Who Don't Like Following Dogs Around.
And speaking of horrors, here's the first kill. And my all-time favourite screen strangulation, too. Everything from the look in Bardem's eyes to the scuff marks on the ground is just massively nightmarish.
Tommy Lee Jones, talking about horrors in an accent so thick that you can only make out every third word. Mountains. Telegraph poles. Oh, this is such a good film.
Contains strong bloody violence. And weird flipping haircuts.
Well, here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, No Country For Old Men.
Good evening everyone, and welcome to tonight’s Film on the Box liveblog. The subject of tonight’s film is No Country For Old Men, the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning tale of money and violence and legitimately baffling haircuts. You’ve probably seen No Country For Old Men before. Even so, you should probably watch it again tonight. This is partly because it’s a very good film, and partly because I’ll get lonely if you don’t.
It’s a very good film, though, isn’t it? No Country For Old Men won four Oscars, and was (at the time) the most commercially successful Coen Brothers film ever. It made a star out of Javier Bardem, made a tourist destination of Plano, Texas and inspired someone to write a comically vast essay about the film’s themes on Wikipedia. In fact, it’s so good that I’m probably going to have a hard time being in any way entertaining about it. Just thought I should warn you.
No Country For Old Men will begin on Film4 at 9pm. I’ll be back here then. Here’s the trailer, friendo: