The Coens are geniuses, but this film has big plot flaws

Rating: 8/10 (13 June 2008)

In order to make sense of the plot, especially toward the end, one really needs to read McCarthy's novel. There is not enough time taken for factual exposition in the later part of the film.
Chigurh does not possess supernatural powers, but the lack of explanation in the later part of the film leads one to believe that he does. The unavoidable contradiction here is that, if the Coens wanted to imply that Chigurh indeed had such powers, why would he have needed the transponder to track Moss in the early part of the film? How did Chigurh even know that Carson Wells was hired to kill him, and how did he locate him? How did the Mexicans locate Moss, and what actually happened when they confronted each other? How did Chigurh recover the money, and what happened to it in the end? In the film, Chigurh kills the drug buyer, not because he sent Wells to kill him, but because he hired the Mexicans to do his job, which is simply a plain misreading of the novel; Wells was hired by the buyer, the Mexicans were the sellers who lost their drugs and the money that was meant for them, they were not hired by the buyer to interfere with Chigurh's contract on Lewellyn.
When one reads the novel, one finds the proper and plausible answers to these questions, but they are omitted from the film. It is as if the brothers were running low on budget and schedule time, and so just left out big chunks of necessary material. I don't mind omissions that streamline a plot, but those that leave the viewer puzzled about how a certain situation ever could happen create flaws in the storytelling that tend to ruin the viewer's experience of an otherwise brilliant and engrossing film.
Finally, the true monstrosity of Chigurh's character is really only hinted at compared with what is disclosed in the novel. His true pathology is even more chilling than anything you could infer from the film.
I guess what I'm saying in summary is that, if this is the best picture of 2007, with all its flaws, the novel is even better than that! I wish the Coens had taken a little more time with it and done justice to the novel's ending.