Brilliantly crafted, brilliant performances, brilliant suspense, but not perfect.

Rating: 6/10 (1 December 2014)

This film is, hands down, one of the most shocking, brutal yet beautiful movies I have watched. Setting the scene in a dusky, dry Texas desert we see our main protagonist, Llewelyn Moss, hunting deer before stumbling upon a drug deal gone wrong. He finds $2 million dollars and skedaddles. A bit naive to think he wouldn't get tracked down, but that's beside the point. He then proceeds to go back to the scene and give water to the drug dealer where he gets shot at by Mexicans who are obviously a part of this drug deal. We then see where our murderous, merciless antagonist, Anton Chigurrh becomes part of the story. He is given a tracker, by people whom we are not introduced to, that will tell him where the money is. Again, us as the audience not knowing why he wants this money so badly that he feels the need to kill everyone who breathes anywhere near him.
Between this moment and the moments leading up to the death of Llewellyn, was hot with shootouts, and lots of intense dialogue. Mainly due to the cold, almost alien-like confrontation given by Javier Bardem and his victims. However I grew no strong bond between the character of Llewellyn, mainly because of his selfish act putting his wife at risk, but I guess that's due to the morals that are trying to be put in place in the movie. This morality embedded in Tommy Lee Jones' character. I believe that his character was just there to give meaning to the title. He served no role in the movie except tell us in frank words; it wasn't like this back in my day. And because of this he felt he was too old to confront these horrific acts due to his age and lack of understanding as to why the generation cares so much for drugs and money.
I do believe the film was futile and simplistic. Simplistic in the terms of, if this movie's storyline was put into the hands of another director, it would be a B-movie. But I'm not just "crapping" on the movie. It had it's moments, all of the moments being the scenes of Javier Bardem's character. You could feel your heart rate rising within every word he spoke to his victims, the intensity was unreal.
6/10