Movie Land

Benjamin Barker is a barber unfairly sentenced to a life of hard labor by Judge Turpin, who lusted for the man’s beautiful and virtuous wife Lucy and daughter Johanna. Assuming the name Sweeney Todd, he escapes from prison and returns to London, assisted by sailor Anthony Hope. There he is told his wife has poisoned herself and his daughter has become the ward of the villainous judge. The home he once shared with his wife and daughter has now been transformed into the worst pie-shop in London by his departed wife’s former friend, Nellie Lovett, and she takes him in and becomes his sole confidante and co-conspirator in revenge. Not distracted by Mrs. Lovett’s bourgeois ambitions or attempts at seduction, Todd spirals deeper into despair, nihilism, violence and insanity, slitting the throat of most customers who enter his shop. Due to the high price of meat, the bodies of his victims go into Mrs. Lovett’s pies, allowing her shop to finally prosper. The first to fall is Adolfo Pirelli, a rival barber who threatens to expose Todd’s past; his young assistant Toby, who knows nothing of this murder, goes to work for Mrs. Lovett.

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The film opens with shots of desolate, wide-open country in West Texas in June 1980. In a voiceover, the local sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), tells of the changing times as the region has become increasingly violent. Next, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) escapes police custody by strangling a young officer and steals a car by using a cattle gun to kill the car’s driver.

Meanwhile, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, comes across a collection of corpses and one dying Mexican, the aftermath of a drug deal gone sour. He also finds two million dollars in a suitcase. Moss refuses to help the Mexican, takes the money and leaves, but is later bothered by his conscience and returns with water for the wounded man. During this second visit Moss is ambushed by gunmen and barely escapes with his life, abandoning his car in the process. Moss makes his way to his trailer home, and plans to put his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) on a bus to stay at her mother’s home until the conflict is resolved.

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