Curiously Unrewarding

Rating: 5/10 (23 March 2008)

Be suspicious of a few negative reviews sticking out among overwhelmingly favorable ones; i.e., is this person trying to show how smart he/she is? Is he/she trying to attract attention? I like the Cohen brothers' movies and am generally optimistic about films. I didn't care for NCFOM.
FARGO was excellent in part because of the banal evil contrasted against the equally matter-of-fact goodness of McDormand's family, friends, etc. Good overcame evil without fanfare, moralizing or -for that matter- very much thought. Further contrast was provided by Macy and Buscemi's characters, who being lost somewhere south of good but north of pure evil, became doomed.
Watching NCFOM, I gathered in the meaning of Tommy Lee Jones opening narrative which laid out the good v. evil motif (if a bit explicitly). Thereafter the theme was supported by little more than cop banter until the end of the film when we get two lengthy and embarrassingly moralizing speeches from the sheriff's friend and family. I'm no intellectual. I can appreciate a movie strictly for style (MULHOLLAND DRIVE) with uneven style (DOGMA) or lacking traditional or cohesive narrative (tons of them). If that's what you set out to do, however, don't paint your film so tediously! Why provide such detailed plot? Why am I fed precious moments of Brolin's fashioning a hook to retrieve the money bag? Why waste minutes teaching us how to self-treat a shotgun injury or where to hide a handgun under a trailer? What am I to do with these details? Why infuse so much deadpan humor; e.g., mother-in-law's back seat rant and Bardem's deadpan monster (this is a relatively juvenile device,see the TERMINATOR). What am I to make of a Texas town entertaining dozens of gunshots and a car crash in the middle of the night with all the townsfolk remaining asleep? If I'm supposed to feel remorse for the futility of goodness I need to see goodness at least FACE the evil. Presently I won't visit West Texas because the lawmen are sipping coffee and the people are zombies.
The Cohen brothers are far better film makers than; e.g., Quentin Tarentino, but I saw a parallel with the hype for PULP FICTION, which I abhorred. I'd read a ton of reviews for each movie. Yet none of the reviews where able to tell me, besides the plot itself, WHY the movie was good or what it was supposed to convey. In other words, all the reviews were gushers of praise by apparently hypnotized viewers. I read Ebert's review after I watched NCFOM. Roger's our finest movie critic and a true gentleman. He has obviously read McCarthy and I have not. Usually after reading an Ebert review I realize how ignorant I am, Usually he points out specific things I didn't pick up or of which I am just unaware. I didn't feel that way this time. NCFOM just did not do it for me.