Could have been great...

Rating: 6/10 (1 January 2015)

One thing I have to admit is that I put off seeing this movie for far too long. I knew it was highly praised at most occasions where awards are handed out. I knew it was directed and adapted for the silver screen by the Coen brothers, for whom I have always had a great appreciation. I wanted to love this, and for the first hour and a half, I truly did. And then... something happened.
It all started with the abrupt death of Llewelyn, slightly foreshadowed and poorly executed. While I did expect his death to occur at some point in time, it came and went so haphazardly, it actually went below feeling like a cheap plot device. Carson's death had some weight to it, at least, and he's a secondary character!
Ambiguity works wonders for most of the Coen directed films, but here it only serves to frustrate anyone who even tries to make sense of what happens throughout the disjointed narrative. I've always loved the inherent randomness that comes with any movie directed by the Coen brothers, but in most other movies, it actually seems plausible and character motivations and actions seem grounded in some underlying logic that seems doomed to fail at one point.
But here, ambiguity skirts the boundary of interesting, and then veers off to the realm of an unintelligible mishmash. And what makes that sadder is that there's a genuinely tense buildup for one of the most interesting antagonists I've seen for a while. Chigurh emulates a deceivingly simple archetype for a psychopathic murderer. But underneath that lunatic polish lies a complex character with both a meticulous conduct for murder, as well as an almost religious regard for the duality of fate.
But even though Chigurh steals the show, he still feels like a dog without a leash sometimes, lacking any real purpose beyond his propensity for organised mayhem. While his motivation, in the form of retrieving the stolen money, is made relatively clear, whom or what he is working for is never really made apparent, and only serves to confuse, rather than entice.
Th last minutes of the film make even less sense, slapping on events that serve no real purpose beyond being narrative hokum. I understand that the theme might be more about Bell realising his principles regarding the world may be outdated, but that is neither emphasised, nor is it framed well. The book may carry with it certain concepts that don't need much explaining, but the movie needs to shoulder its own weight, and I believe that it has failed at that from a narrative point of view.
Perhaps I viewed the movie with escalated expectations, but I see no reason why that shouldn't be the case, as both the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy have delivered beforehand.
While "No Country for Old Men" isn't a bad movie, I do believe it could have been more than has been presented. I know I won't receive much praise for the bashing I have given the movie, given its considerable amount of fans, but although I tried to be part of that group, I can't bring myself to enjoy the movie as much as I would have wanted to.
I rated the film lower than movies that have a much lesser significance mostly because the rating was given in regard to other productions by the Coen brothers, which I feel possess more quality and depth than what I have witnessed in "No Country for Old Men".