More hokum from the Coen Brothers

Rating: 4/10 (22 February 2008)

More semi-entertaining hokum from the Coen Brothers. It's quite curious that the mass killings by a sophisticated serial killer only garners the attention of one hick small-town sheriff and his staff. What happened to the FBI? Yes the DEA is mentioned but we never see them. What happened to all the media coverage? The serial killers picture would probably have made the national news and he should have been on the FBI's 10 most wanted list but we see none of that. Yes I know it's supposed to be 1980 but still the pursuit of this fugitive would have been a big story. The reason why the Coens don't show that is because they've created a totally unrealistic character that exists totally in their specious imagination. In real life there would have been hundreds of law enforcement agents tracking this guy but we never get a sense of that in this laughable scenario.
Although the story is supposed to be 25 years before our own time, the killer seems more like a specially trained Matt Damon CIA agent straight out of the Bourne Identity. He's so good that he knows how to create the perfect diversion to obtain the proper drugs and has the medical training to remove a bullet from his leg. He almost seems like a superman, gunning down anyone who comes into his path without a whimper from law enforcement. What's more he always seems to know how to find anybody he plans on eliminating. We also never completely understand his motives for killing the many innocent people he comes across. Is he simply a thrill killer who enjoys terrorizing the public at large? We never really learn anything about his past history. Usually there's a discussion amongst law enforcement officials detailing a killer's background--we never get a sense of that during this movie.
Just as we must have a Superman for an antagonist, we must also have a Superman for a protagonist. Josh Brolin, a welder who lives in a trailer park, seems like the perfect match for the evil Chigurh. Brolin's 'Llewelyn Moss' shows absolutely no fear taking $2 million from Mexicans, mostly all massacred at a crime scene. But suddenly, he has a pang of conscience which propels him back to the crime scene with a gallon of water to help one of the dying drug dealers. The average person would have called the police had they come upon such a scene; if he was amoral (as he is initially depicted), then he certainly wouldn't have been so stupid to return to the scene and put himself in such jeopardy. When he does return to the scene of the slaughter, suddenly he's a superman again, eluding a truck full of drug dealers shooting at him, swimming in the rapids and fending off a vicious dog who swims after him in the river. Then he devises this incredible plan where he stuffs the $2 million bucks in a ventilator shaft at the motel, has the drug dealers occupy his motel room (didn't they also have a transponder and would have discovered the bag in the shaft?) and has the serial killer eliminate the drug dealers and evades being eliminated himself.
Meanwhile, Tommie Lee Jones, our hick sheriff as well as all the other stereotypical Texans depicted in this film, seem powerless against this maniacal killer. One gets the impression that just about all ordinary folk who lived in the South in 1980 are a bunch of dumb yokels. To be fair, the Coens also depict their hired killers as dumb yokels too. Woody Harrelson suddenly comes out of nowhere, is presented as some fantastic hired killer who's going to track down the serial killer and within half an hour, ends up the killer's hostage in a hotel room and is blown away (not before however he just happens to be strolling along the bridge near the US-Mexican Border and just happens to glance downward and discovers the bag full of money! What a coincidence!)
The Coens' view of life is basically nihilistic and pessimistic. What they're saying here is that evil is stronger than those with a moral compass and that we live in a universe where we have no control over random events (even the serial killer is almost killed himself in a random car accident at the end of the film).
Sure, bad things sometimes happen to good people but those who have a moral purpose in this world are not ineffectual pushovers (as depicted by a character like the Sheriff who basically concedes that he will be the serial killer's next victim and that he is powerless to stop him). When the deck is stacked as it is here in this movie, evil is the clear winner. But in reality, it's not so easy for the bad guys to walk away without being brought to the bar of justice. The Coens are trying to say that we are only observers here--that sometimes men are powerless in the face of evil. There is nothing profound about their observations; and their strategy is dishonest because their antagonist is way too smart for his opponents. When the opponents are nothing but a bunch of stereotypical hicks and losers of every stripe, it's easy to understand why the bad guy walks away with nothing more than a broken arm carefully held in place by a self-constructed sling.