Just Say "No"

Rating: 1/10 (1 March 2008)

This movie stunk!! I'm a huge Coen Brothers fan; love Fargo, Oh Brother.., Raising Arizona, Lady Killers, even the Man Who Wasn't There, but DON"T BOTHER GOING TO SEE THIS STINKER! I was eagerly anticipating the kind of gratuitous violence the Coen brothers are known for but found these killings just plain stupid, not funny, not frightening, just stupid. I was looking forward to well developed West Texas characters and found that the ultimate fate of each character had nothing to do with all the boring details we had to sit through: Llewelyn Moss was a tough hard nosed vet. His wife says he won't back down to anyone. He gets really scared and really paranoid through the course of the film. After the psycho threatens his wife, he says he's got something in store for the psycho. So what does he do? He stands around by the pool in broad daylight, with NO GUN, waiting for his wife. WHAT? They don't even show him being killed??? With Carla Jean Moss' character I thought the Coen's would dive into the "redneck wife" character like they did with "Minnesota mom", Marge Gunderson in Fargo, but no. They dabble around and show some interesting glimpses but all for not. They don't even show her fate. The only clue was the psycho checking his boots for blood. It wasn't funny or ironic or significant or anything of substance. It was just stupid. Carson Wells is some kind of drug lord's clean up guy, super tough and ultra street savvy. He's so smart he knows that Moss is in the Mexican hospital. BUT, knowing the psycho is in town he stupidly walks through the hotel lobby and lets the psycho get the jump on him???? Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is a wise old redneck (literally) sheriff who's seen it all. He figures out that the psycho likes to use an air-gun to knock out locks. He's giving Carla Jean advice and you would think he would know how Moss would behave enough to find and help him. BUT NO. The closest his character comes to actually DOING something is when he searches the blood soaked hotel room AFTER the psycho has left. And that old technique of the bad guy waiting in ambush, but not in the same location, is way over used and way too cheap for the Coen brothers. As with Carla Jean's character, they failed to make use of all the time spent developing the sheriff. The genius of the Coen Brothers is, or was to develop a local character, in part making fun of it, but in the end showing how some aspect of the character plays out. In this film the local twists in the characters were TOTALLY WASTED. It might as well have been set in the Bronx. As for the psycho himself he was the best developed character, much more typical of the Coen brothers. His apparent demise, signaled by the green traffic signal, very "Coen-esque", was even screwed-up. To any hard-core Coen brother's fan Chigurh was SUPPOSE to die in the random traffic accident, HOW IRRONIC. (If you don't believe me go watch Lady Killers, it's hysterical) BUT NO!! They even screwed this up. I have never been to a movie before where everyone, I mean everyone in the theater got up at the end of the move and said: "That stunk! I can't believe THAT won best picture!" The Academy giving this huge disappointment "Best Picture" tells me one of two things; either they're rewarding the Coen brothers for sinking to their level or there just weren't ANY other films made in 2007.