Well made but it felt incredibly detached.

Rating: 5/10 (8 July 2009)

This was an odd film--and I don't mean this in a favorable way. That's because unlike most Coen Brothers movies I have seen, I felt almost nothing favorable towards any of the characters and it all just seemed very detached and, at times, uninteresting. While I can respect the intricacy of the plot and the good acting, I just felt like I could not have cared less about the movie and could have just as easily turned it off and not finish it. In fact, had it not been a Coen Brothers film, I probably would have done just that. Fortunately, the movie did get a little better towards the end, but not enough to make the time I invested in it worth the payoff.
The biggest problem is that the film didn't seem to know whether it was meant to be a comedy or a drama. And, if it was meant to be a comedy, the very graphic killings later in the film weren't the funny FARGO type but just violent. This much violence and cursing kill the comedy, though I still am not sure that it was meant to be a comedy...even on a dark level.
The other problem is that no one in the film is particularly nice or even that interesting. In fact, it's almost as if the film is trying to say that everyone is bad and it's all very meaningless. Perhaps, but I just found this made the film a hard one to relate to or care about, even if the acting was generally good.
"Blah"--a word I never would have thought I'd apply to a Coen Brothers film. I've seen all their films and I must say this is the first one that was blah among them. Even their failures are very good and challenging...this one was just blah.