Raising Arizona (1987)

If ever you wondered what inspired movie and TV show writers to cram endless amounts of intellectualism into characters of decidedly average means and intellect, this absurdist comedy is almost certainly on each and every list. I am sure that there have been numerous witty films using the same character-dialogue pairing as Raising Arizona. Given how near-sighted much of the film and television industries have been recently when looking for inspiration, however, the popularity of this early Coen Brothers film makes it an easy target for imitation.

Herbert “Hi” McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) is a petty thief who speaks like a literature and linguistics professor. Every time he is arrested for robbing convenience stores, he flirts with the same policewoman (Holly Hunter). Over the course of several arrests, he learns that she is newly single after a painful breakup with her fiancé. Upon his latest release from prison, he proposes to his beloved Ed (short for Edwina) and the two marry and settle down in a trailer in the middle of the Arizona landscape.

The pair is desperate to have children but they learn that Ed is infertile. Given Hi’s criminal history, adoption is also out of the question. After seeing a story about a local business tycoon and his wife celebrating the birth of quintuplets, Hi and Ed plot to kidnap one of the youngin’s under the logic that these people have more kids than they need or can manage. Keeping and caring for the child prove to be a challenge as Hi and Ed are beset by the police, a demented bounty hunter, and two of Hi’s bumbling prison pals who just escaped and are looking to make a quick buck with the reward money.

The nice thing about Raising Arizona is that it never plays out under false pretenses. From the very beginning, the characters’ behavior and the writing makes it clear in no certain terms that this film is not to be taken seriously. The trouble with this approach is that it doesn’t guarantee that some viewers won't try to take it seriously anyway. On the flip-side, this absurdist nature of this film’s comedy doesn’t allow for audiences to turn off their brains and chuckle it up for an hour and a half. You do get to turn off a great portion of your brain while taking it all in, but you also need to turn on a very small, specific part of the brain that doesn’t get used often enough.

Nicolas Cage espouses his lines with a dreamy, gentlemanly swagger. His prison pals speak in a similar manner but are nowhere near as eloquent as Hi. Ed, on the other hand, speaks a more normal language. She gets her moments of wordy glory but her common tongue and her spitfire personality plays well against Hi’s drifter-esque mentality. It’s the collision of these attitudes, speech styles and behavior that generate most of the laughs.

Some will find the wordplay over the top and unnecessary. But I ask you, what would this film have going for it otherwise? It would just be a kidnapper comedy with outlandish characters that don’t make sense. If nothing else, the Coen’s verbose script acts as a gateway to accepting the rest of the film. If you can gel with the script, all the gags and situational humor will be easy to digest. If you can’t get past the dialogue, you’re less likely to swallow everything else.

Much of the physical comedy is recycled from nearly a century of cinema silliness. The execution of these gags is always where comedy films rise and fall. Raising Arizona makes them work. The corny, pseudo-intellectual dialogue butters you up enough that everything else in this film is funny by default. The Coen Brothers know their broad target audience will already be having fun with the film and they continually go for broke with what moviegoers typically expect from a comedy.

Is it perfect? No, but you’ll most likely laugh your way through any logical flaws (if you really are determined enough to apply logic here) and other minor mistakes. That is the sign of a classic comedy that will be appreciated by generations to come. Raising Arizona is a fine blend of blue-collar and elitism, the likes of which may be imitated for years to come but never successfully replicated.

RATING: 4 out of 5

No Country for Old Men** (2007)

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert when it comes to film. I am passionate about it and I try to learn about the craft and its history when I can. Every now and then a movie comes along that makes me feel like an outsider. In some cases it boils down to too much hype or my subjective opinion. These cases are easy to identify because there are usually a number of professional critics and moviegoers who share my outlook. Then there are films like the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. Praised for its artistry and themes by many, I stand confused and wonder if I missed something.

While hunting, Llewellyn Moss comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong in the wastelands of West Texas. Moss finds all but one man dead and makes off with over $2 million in drug money left at the scene. Later that night, he suffers a guilty conscience and takes water back out for the lone survivor to ease his suffering. This decision proves life-altering, as men connected to the botched deal show up to reclaim their money at the same time. Moss escapes but leaves his truck behind. The drug lords use the plates to identify him and hire a vicious hitman to track him and the money down.

The hitman, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), is inventive, super-intelligent and relentless. Using a transponder hidden in the money, Chigurh tracks Moss down and they begin a deadly game of cat-and-mouse spanning both sides of the border. In the midst of all this, aging lawman Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) does what he can to protect Moss and his wife, finding himself always one step behind and picking up the pieces of a new breed of lawlessness he can’t comprehend.

I’ll put a little praise out there first- Javier Bardem is spectacular as Anton Chigurh. He earned his Oscar, no questions asked. The cold indifference toward his victims is chilling enough but Bardem really gets across how smart the man is too. Here is not just a desensitized killing machine; Chigurh ponders philosophy, determinism and chance with his victims. Nothing creeps us out like a bad guy smart enough to be a college professor and yet doesn’t bat an eye while killing someone.

Here’s the trouble- Chigurh is the kind of frightening villain that requires a strong protagonist. Lewellyn Moss is not that person. Even without passing moral judgment on his actions (leaving a man in the desert heat, taking money that isn’t his, and not reporting a crime scene), Moss does not come across as a likeable guy whatsoever. He’s stubborn, defiant and I’m pretty sure he was poaching instead of hunting. Nothing he does early on tells me I should care about this man.

But then Chigurh comes along and all but forces you to care about Moss. Not because he’s in the right or in any way an innocent victim, but because, subconsciously, we know that we shouldn’t pull for the psychotic killer chasing him. It makes for a frustrating experience. When Chigurh comes close to his prey, the intensity ratchets up and you can’t help but find yourself on the edge of your seat. You want to shout at Moss to stop being such an idiot, but you’re still on the edge of your seat.

Speaking of Chigurh catching up to Moss, this is just one example of how much chance and luck fills the story. Moss coming across the carnage of the drug deal is believable. Going back to give a dying man water hours later is a stretch at best (and also did nothing to redeem Moss’s character for me). Obviously, Moss needs to go back or there would be no story, because the drug lords wouldn’t have tracked his plates and Chigurh probably never would have found Moss with his transponder. Said transponder is the lone element of the film that reminds you that the story takes place in the 1980s. Chigurh had to be less than a quarter of a mile away from the cash in order to pick up a signal. He may have been able to track Moss down over time but, frankly, he got lucky to find him at all.

The only likeable major character in the film is the lawman. He spends most of the movie wondering what’s gone wrong with the world that criminals keep getting more violent and using more frightening means to do their dirty work. His musings on crime and violence are interesting but they’re also made a moot point later in the film when another former lawman tells him that all the old-timers say the same thing when a new generation finds ways to break the law. The question is still out there as to whether or not crime will ever stop getting uglier but the answer is that ‘uglier’ is all relative anyway.

While much of the film is an exciting game of cat-and-mouse, the third reel leaves something to be desired. There’s some finality and resolution but that last reel feels anticlimactic in a number of ways to me. I understand that not every story needs to have a clear-cut ending but the film seems to end too suddenly after a very slow stretch of dialogue. It’s one of those endings that make you go ‘huh?’

No Country for Old Men is a very good film about very sketchy people. Maybe Hollywood and the Academy enjoyed embracing their darker side with this film. That could explain why it won Best Picture. Or maybe it just wasn’t a strong year for Oscar nominees. Whatever the reason, I don’t quite see what everyone else saw that made this such an award-worthy film.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5