Mad men: greed is good for these bad boys, driven to villainy by money, fame, and one truly unfortunate haircut

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

DIRECTED BY Joel and Ethan Coen

STARRING Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin

and Tommy Lee Jones

MIRAMAX

AMERICAN GANGSTER

DIRECTED BY Ridley Scott

STARRING Denzel Washington and

Russell Crowe

UNIVERSAL

AN ACTOR LIKE JAVIER BARDEM has many things going for him--imposing size, handsome looks, and a high profile on both sides of the Atlantic--but his greatest asset may be his voice. As gay writer-poet Reinaldo Arenas in the 2000 film Before Night Falls, the Spanish-born Bardem had to master both the English language and a Cuban accent, and the splashy result earned him his first Oscar nomination. His second will almost certainly come from No Country for Old Men, where, as the mysterious assassin Chigurh, Bardem drops his voice so low you'd think it was a special effect.

Though Chigurh is certainly one of the most fearsome film villains since Hannibal Letter, Bardem resists the urge to camp it up--no small feat, considering Chigurh's odd pageboy haircut and slaughterhouse stun gun. He's been sent to track down $2 million that went missing after a drug bust gone bad--it was picked up by innocent bystander Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who lays out booby traps for the man hunting him and his prize. But Chigurh is as implacable as the clouds rolling across the film's barren Texas plains. He's a human Terminator, impossible to be reasoned with until he has taken the deadly toll he set out to take.

No Country for Old Men was directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and in its own way, it serves as a bookend to their snow noir, Fargo. That film found police chief Marge Gunderson shaking her head over a trail of murders, telling the perpetrator in the back of her cop car, "Here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it." Marge's spiritual successor in No Country is the kindly Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who seems just as stumped by the black hearts that could cause such mayhem. Bell's problem is that he requires so little--the love of his wife and, perhaps, a good breakfast--he can't conceive of what people would do for a lot more.

For Bell, Ridley Scott's American Gangster might serve as a valuable primer. It's based on the true story of '70s-era drug kingpin Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), who was willing to do anything to become one of Manhattan's most wealthy crime lords, even smuggle cocaine into the country through the coffins of men felled in the Vietnam War. Lucas is a lawbreaker and a killer--in his first appearance in the film, he executes a man in cold blood-but apparently he was a charmer as well. Not only did he serve just a few years of some 70 years in prison sentences, he made friends of both the judge and the detective who investigated him (played in the film by Russell Crowe).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

If you're wondering what made this gangster's crimes so easy to overlook, seek out Mark Jacobson's absorbing profile of Lucas in the 2000 New York article "The Return of Superfly." The dazzle of that Lucas is at odds with Washington's constrained portrayal: The actor, who proved in Training Day that he could make a villain likable, seems unable or unwilling to dig in here. Director Scott likewise turns in his most restrained work in some time--none of his recent fast-cutting or overblown wide-screen tableaus--and yet this is a story brought to life only by its most flashy elements: say, when Scott's camera leers at the naked women cutting coke or witnesses Lucas yell at an underling cleaning his carpet, "That's alpaca--it's $25,000! You don't rub that shit, you blot it!" Without moments like those, American Gangster is just Scarface drained of its melodramatic kick.

Intercut with Lucas's rise is the story of Crowe's Richie Roberts, an honest detective working alongside shadier colleagues on the drug beat. Crowe works hard in the role but feels miscast--Roberts is supposed to be a New York Jew who weathers frequent ethnic slurs, a poor fit for the blond, beefy Australian. And that ethnicity is important because, at its core, American Gangster is the story of two underestimated minorities with something to prove. In the film Lucas is torn by his desire to "pass"--he instructs his underlings to dress square, blend in, nothing flashy--and his desire to be a star. When Lucas finally gives in and goes to a boxing match in an attention-getting sable coat, he comes alive--and so, briefly, does the movie.

COPYRIGHT 2007 LPI Media
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale Group