This film is ludicrous

Rating: 1/10 (25 February 2008)

Brilliantly shot? Yes. Brilliantly acted? Yes. A masterpiece? Emphatically not.
As an accurate cinematic realisation of a book the Cohen brothers' version of Cormack McCarthy's novel is hard to fault. But the novel is ludicrous, and, ultimately, so is the film.
Why? Because:
1) The self-consciously post-modern comic book plot: a briefcase of drugs money, temporarily unguarded after a desert drug-deal shoot-out in which everyone died, is found by 'Nam vet (Llewellyn Moss - Josh Brolin) while hunting deer. Living gang members are quickly on his trail. Moss goes on the run with the cash. Terminator-style hit-man (Anton Chigurh - Javier Bardem) embarks on killing spree to recover the loot. He starts by brutally throttling a policeman. Ordinarily this would trigger a massive police response. But this never happens. Instead, two local lawmen trail lamely in Chigurh's wake as the killings multiply, casually and repeatedly messing up abundant forensic evidence as they go. Eventually Chigurh recovers the cash, kills Moss and probably Moss's girlfriend too (just to keep a promise). Ageing sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) laments tide of violent crime lapping at his feet. The End. 2) Apart from the burnt-out Bell, the characters are about as realistic as the puppets in an episode of Thunderbirds. They move through the plot in the same jerky way with strings glinting in the unrelenting Texan sunlight. The hit-man is the most clunky puppet of the lot: a relentessly banal robot.
The adulation heaped on this silly film is a classic example of the emperor's new clothes.