Well done...except for the ending

Rating: 9/10 (11 February 2008)

If I can sum up "No Country for Old Men" in a few words I would call it a movie of violent consequences. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon an aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. Amidst the dead bodies and heroin, he steals a suitcase that has over $2 million in it. Little does he know what lies ahead of him and what kind of people are after him, including Mexican drug dealers and a psychopathic hit man named Anton Chigurh who likes leaving a trail of dead bodies. With this in motion, the town's sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) discovers the drug deal aftermath and later comes to realize the players behind the slaughter as well as Llewellyn. Can he save Llewellyn and stop the bloody trail?
By far, on Javier Bardem's acting as Anton Chigurh, he performs among the most monstrous and frightening villains I have seen on the big screen. He's not like a hit man in a Quentin Tarantino film who smiles, smokes, and dances, wears flashy clothes and is often predictable in his actions. Instead, Javier as Anton is more along the lines of Norman Bates. He's quiet, at most unpredictable, smart, cunning, and emotionless. There is no doubt he will get the Oscar for actor in supporting. If he doesn't, that would be a real shame.
In addition, the screenplay by the Coen brothers is brilliant as is their directing talents of making suspense, thrills, and drama. I was on the edge of seat throughout the film. What was nice about this movie is that it does not rely on music to build a suspenseful moment like an M. Night Shyamalan film. Instead, the camera angles and the actors' talents made it intense. The only music I remember hearing in the film was for the ending credits.
Josh Brolin is a pretty good protagonist. He's does not play superman-like character, but a man who is just like anyone else, but in a situation that no one would ever want to be in. Woody Harrelson was only in the movie for about a half hour; he still holds to his sense of humor and charm.
But the weak line I felt in this film was Tommy Lee Jones. He starts the film with an introduction and for the first ninety minutes of the film is a supporting character. With the last half hour of the film, after the unexpected death of the protagonist, Tommy Lee Jones jumps in as the new good guy. He figures everything out at the end, but doesn't try to track down the bad guys, leaving them to escape Scott free. I almost felt like I was watching a totally different film in the last thirty minutes. The suspense diminishes and it drags with Tommy Lee Jones looking tired and depressed. He then closes the film by mumbling some lines about a couple of dreams he had, which reflects his failures of protecting Llewellyn Moss and his wife, and then the film fades to black.
There was quite a few murmurs of disappointment in the theater that I was in. There's no resolution at the end. Maybe this was the directors' doing or if that's how the book ended. Either way, I wanted to know what would happen next. However, the ending gives the implication that the world is full of wicked and crazy people like Anton, but there are also people out there who try to track them down. Unfortunately the hero doesn't get him in this film.
As I said in the first paragraph, this film is about violence. It was every as bad as Martin Scorsese's The Departed if not worse in some scenes. There's nothing pleasant or stylish about it like in 300. In fact, several people in the theater with me gasped by the graphic depiction of the violence. When it means "rated R for strong graphic violence", it means it.
I will say this was a very well done movie, but not the best film of the year. I won't be surprised if this wins picture and director at the Oscars, but my vote is for There Will Be Blood over this one. There's a more solid story there. 9/10