Gallons and gallons of blood

Rating: 1/10 (26 January 2008)

Not to mention bloated dead bodies of dogs and humans and a "man who wouldn't die".
"No Country for Old Men" has Javier Bardem playing Anton Chigurh, a monstrous motive-less killer (unless you count the money, but how does he know about it?) He slides in and out of scenes, you are always chilled but like the clichéd train-wreck victims you see reeling on the side of the road, he never engages you, you never speculate on what made him this way, he is simply a nerveless, passionless cypher.
Actually the clichés were too many to count in this truly, truly disappointing effort from the Coen brothers. A police officer turns his back on the monster and is promptly dispatched and of course the monster manages to squeeze bloodily out of his own handcuffs. H'mm. The instrument used to kill by Chigurh is some kind of stun gun with an oxygen tank. Surely to God he could get hands on a gun with a silencer and not have to lug this tank around like some deranged Fred Munster? There is so much blood, the only conclusion I could make was that this was the whole point, raise the barf meter with everyone, show acres of gratuitous violence to draw in the desirable adbash demographic and forget any kind of plot. A slasher film for the pseudo-sophisticated.
The movie grabs you early and you think, as you survey a field full of fallen felons (they were involved in a drug heist) discovered by an officer played by Josh Brolin, that this movie is going to unwind a great mystery. You settle in for the denouement.
Poor you. You are sidetracked by an absolutely meaningless sub-plot involving Woody Harrelson (another grisly ending) and by Tommy Lee Jones who was left without any relevant script and wanders cynically in and out of scenes, delivering tired old witticisms as a sheriff. We can count the ways and days of tired old cynical sheriffs. I was waiting for "life is just a box of chocolates and Chigurh the hardboiled candy". It would have improved things.
I was baffled as to the narrative. Was there one? Why didn't I get it? Was this movie, in spite of the barrels of blood, too deep for me? I was asking myself these questions long before it was over.
Was this movie reaching for pretension or was it truly in the stratum of the intellectual elite? Coin toss answer.
For me, it seemed fitting that there was no ending to this. No plot should equal a no ending. The beast didn't die and went on his stumbling way. All the good guys died, apart from aforementioned slow-drawl sheriff, who is now retired.
Zero artistic merit, zero plot. I gave it a 1 to bring down the over-rating. I still like Tommy, Josh gave a great perforance but I'm going to be really leery of future Coen efforts.