Javier Bardem is not afraid to look as ugly as is humanly possible.
Look back over blockbusters such as Skyfall or Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge, he rocked up as a villain with manky blonde hair/part of his face missing and slowly flaking away/most of his body missing, respectively.
However, when he arrived as the bad guy in No Country For Old Men, he was armed with nothing more than a bolt-gun and a horrific bowl haircut, and instantly an iconic cinematic villain for the ages was born.
Clip via BadWolf
Released on 9 November 2007, No Country For Old Men is arguably the best film in The Coen’s Brothers CV which, when you consider that also includes The Big Lebowksi, Miller’s Crossing, True Grit and Fargo, is quite the achievement.
Speaking of Fargo, No Country has an awful lot in common with that snowy crime caper: in both cases, there is an older, wise police chief (Frances McDormand / Tommy Lee Jones), both of whom are forced to deal with some particularly grizzly murders in their otherwise quiet town from an out-of-towner.
Basic greed is the driving factor in both of the plots, and both movies feature a cold-blooded killer who doesn’t seem to possess normal human characteristics, but whereas Peter Stormare’s Gaear Grismrud was a scary supporting character with a penchant for throwing people into wood-chippers, Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh was so much more than that.
The man with the awful bowl hair-cut was essentially manifesting fate itself, choosing your future with a flip of the coin and a push of the button on his bolt-gun.
And then there is that hair-cut.
He spoke to Collider about the preparation for the role, the lack of back-story helping give him an other-worldly sense of fear, but also how that bowl-cut played into his interpretation of the character:
“So, I went to the trailer and they cut it and I saw it and I said, ‘What the hell is that?’ But that helped a lot actually because in a way he gave this reality to the character this dimension of being very methodical. Everything is in place. It’s kind of mathematical. Like perfectly structured which is the way I thought the character should be. Perfectly clean. I thought this could help, but not for my private life though.”
Of course, Bardem wasn’t alone in making the movie fantastic – his incredible co-stars, The Coen Brothers directing with harsh minimalism, adapting Cormac McCarthy’s most pulpy of thrillers – but he is the most lasting memory everyone has after watching it.
Combined, it created one of the best thrillers this side of The Silence Of The Lambs, and this was backed up by the movie receiving 8 Oscar nominations, and winning four of them, including Best Supporting Actor (for Bardem, obviously), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture, beating the likes of There Will Be Blood, Atonement and Michael Clayton.
Last year it was voted the 10th best movie of the 21st century so far, and on the movie’s 10th anniversary, what better way to celebrate than to sit down with the modern masterpiece and let the horror wash over you.
Clip via Movieclips Trailer Vault
