comment #1

lazarus says ...

No Jackie Treehorn?

Paul Newman in Hudsucker also has demonic qualities.

comment #2

Sean says ...

Well, in Hudsucker there's the whole angel/devil thing with Bill Cobbs' Moses and ... and whoever that other character was in the clock tower.

comment #3

rcpweiner says ...

I'm not going to say that Peter Stormare in "Fargo" is "unstoppable evil" -- you know, since he's stopped and all -- but he's pretty close to demonic.

comment #4

Mr. Muckle says ...

Heinz, the Baron Kraus von Espy scared the hell out of me.

"I'm the CONCIERGE!"

comment #5

Rich S. says ...

Don't forget Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) and Loren Visser (M.Emmet Walsh) from Blood Simple. They may not be unstoppable evil, but they sure are hard to kill.

comment #6

Beaucoul says ...

None of the previous characterizations are as implacably or unrelentingly evil as Anton Chigurh, so I don't see any of them as part of the same set.

However, there are plenty of other characterizations of "unremitting evil" outside of the Coen Bros. canon that parallel the one in "No Country."

Perhaps there are too many. That's just one of the problems I had with the movie.

comment #7

Jeffrey Overstreet says ...

I laughed out loud seeing "No Country" for the first time, because I had just thought to myself... gosh, this Chigurh guy's like the Spawn of the Lone Biker the Apocalypse from "Raising Arizona"!

And then, lo... while Chigurh was roaring down the highway, he opened fire on a small roadside animal (a bird, if I recall correctly) just as the motoring Lone Biker blasted away at a bunny rabbit and a lizard. As deliberate a reference as they could have made.

comment #8

Jeffrey Overstreet says ...

Also...

All of the Coen films also feature, at some point, an egomaniacal kingpin who sits behind a desk. The Big Desk may be the Coens' most recurrent symbol.

comment #9

Beaucoul says ...

hmm...there's also a scene in "o brother.." that shows baby face nelson shooting some cows from a car.

i guess nothing says evil like gunning done wildlife from a moving vehicle.

still, those other characters are played for laughs, whereas anton is supposed to be truly menacing.

nevertheless, i could barely repress a chuckle at that gerbil he was wearing on his head. perhaps he bagged it from some earlier scene.

comment #10

Burbanked says ...

Jeffrey Overstreet: The Chigurh blasting-the-bird bit isn't a reference to Raising Arizona's Smalls; it's directly from McCarthy's book.

comment #11

Jeffrey Overstreet says ...

Ah. Well, still, it's still an uncanny connection, no? I wonder if McCarthy was thinking of the Lone Biker when he wrote that. McCarthy and the Coens' sensibilities are so similar, and their conversation in... what was it, Newsweek?... suggested that they've been fans of each other for a while now.

When I read "No Country" for the first time, I kept commenting on how much the dialogue between the characters sounded like a script by the Coen Brothers. I'm surprised they haven't signed up to work together again. (And with yesterday's announcement about the Coens adapting Chabon, they've now got four projects on the horizon.)

comment #12

Dan Revill says ...

The Coens are adapting Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

I've been meaning to pick up the book for awhile. Guess it just pushed itself up on my list of things to read.

comment #13

DavidF says ...

You could also make the argument that John Goodman's character in O Brother is rather demonic.

Or you could accept that most movies have protagonists/good guys as well as antagonists/bad guys and that this article doesn't really have much to say.

After all, don't George Lucas' movies feature, an "archetype of 'unstoppable evil?" What about Disney movies? What about the Die Hard movies, hmmm?

I think you're digging for ideas when you're scanning the Wikipedia bios for something you can riff on...

comment #14

Rich S. says ...

All I know is, if you're a Disney villain, never, ever climb on something above ground level. About 90% of the time, it means your doom.

comment #15

Beaucoul says ...

i couldn't help make the connection between tommy lee jones' vo in "no country" and sam elliot's vo in "the big lebowski."

i kept thinking tommy lee jones was going to say something like "the dude abides," at the end of the movie.

comment #16

lazarus says ...

Beaucoul, as it's Chigurh who appears to walk off into the sunset, the correct narration would be "The 'do abides"...

comment #17

Mark says ...

Hunter S. Thompson once described the Elevator "But, Buddy" Operator in Hudsucker Proxy as follows: Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Buzz is an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He is utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

Before the review was published, Richard Nixon died, and Thompson transferred the line to Nixon's obit.

comment #18

Nightswimmer says ...

Example #6: Kesyer Soze (Kevin Spacey) in "The Usual Suspects". Doh!

comment #19

Cadavra says ...

What did the Coens have to do with USUAL SUSPECTS?

comment #20

jesse says ...

I saw it at the Woodstock Film Festival earlier in the month and I was underwhelmed. David Denby wrote a piece on underdramatization in what he called the Cinema of
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Observation where he offered a new criticism of cinematic realism. He argued, in essence, that not enough 'happened' dramatically in films of this ilk. And while W&L isn't exactly like Smart People and other films he referenced, it's not an experimental film either. Yes, we emphasize with her suffering but I needed more there there.