The Outlaw

Cormac McCarthy wrote the book and I may have more to say on McCarthy elsewhere.

NCFOM was a quite exceptional movie. I think the key to its’ success was that everything was kept very low key, the sort of grandiose scenes one usually assosciates with the West, or Western themes are quite demure. There are some remarkable vistas in NCFOM though, a sense of desolate and open space is captured superbly, especially in the opening scenes.

The same desolation seems to pervade the spirit of the characters in NCFOM. We have Chigurh, the epitome of the modern villain. Chigurh does not wear a black hat and I think there would be very few people putting themself in his shoes. In contrast, the Sheriff (played in typical Tommy Lee Jones fashion – yet another discussion in itself) we can relate to – but not because we see ourselves riding off into the sunset. I suppose it has more to do with the sort of weary determination the Sheriff exhibits, it is cops and robbers in real life, the bad guy really is bad and the good guy, really, is just a man.

 Anyway, what is really interesting is how closely NCFOM mimics the storyline of McCarthy’s book. I was dreading the inevitable absence of the sort of little interactions characters within a book may have, for example, or the asides we remember for no apparent reason. But they are all there and of course, Jones is the master of the sort of deadpan delivery that still manages to have us hanging off every word.

Outlaw Rating: Book 3/5. Film 4/5.