Boring

Rating: 1/10 (25 May 2009)

This movie is so boring that I am tempted to hire Anton Chigurh to go shot the movie producers, writers and directors.
Seriously, just look at this plot: West Texas in June 1980 is desolate, wide-open country, and Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) laments the increasing violence in a region where he, like his father before him, has risen to the office of sheriff. Hit-man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) strangles a sheriff's deputy, escapes custody, and steals a car by using a captive bolt pistol to kill the driver. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), hunting pronghorn near the Rio Grande river, comes across a collection of corpses and one dying Mexican; the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry. He finds two million dollars in a satchel a short distance from the massacre. Initially taking the money and leaving the Mexican to die, Moss returns with water for the dying man later that night. Discovered by a pair in a jeep, he's chased into the river and loses his truck.
Moss stashes the satchel in the air vent of his motel room hideaway, but a group of Mexicans occupy the room, lying in wait to ambush him. He's forced to rent a connecting room that shares the same vent. Chigurh, hired to retrieve the money, traces it via a radio transponder hidden inside the satchel, bursts in and slaughters the Mexicans. Searching for the satchel, Chigurh removes the vent cover with a dime and realizes Moss has retrieved it and escaped. Chigurh tracks Moss to a border town hotel, his pursuit climaxing in a firefight that spills onto the streets.
Both men are badly wounded. Moss flees across the border, collapsing from his injuries and waking up in a Mexican hospital. There Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), another hired operative, offers to save his life for the money. After Chigurh brutally treats his own leg wounds with stolen medication, he gets the drop on Wells back at his hotel and kills him just as Moss calls the room. Picking up the phone and carefully avoiding the blood on the floor, Chigurh offers to spare Moss's wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), for the money. Moss is defiant.
Moss arranges a rendezvous with Carla Jean in El Paso to give her the money and send her out of harm's way. Everyone converges on El Paso, but Bell and Carla Jean do not arrive until after Moss is dead in a shootout. Bell returns that night to the scene and finds that the lock to Moss's motel room door has been blown out. Chigurh hides behind the door of a motel room, observing the shifting light through an empty lock hole. His gun drawn, Bell enters Moss' room and notices that the vent cover has been removed with a dime and the vent is empty.
Bell visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), an ex-lawman. Bell plans to retire because he feels "overmatched," but Ellis points out that the region has always been violent. For Ellis, thinking it's "all waiting on you, that's vanity." Chigurh locates the widowed Carla Jean and waits for her at her recently deceased mother's home. Although he gave his word that she would die if Moss did not hand over the money, Chigurh offers her a coin toss; Carla Jean refuses to call it. Leaving the house alone, Chigurh carefully checks the soles of his boots. As he drives away, Chigurh is injured in a car accident; his left arm is badly broken. He manages to leave the scene before the police arrive.
Now retired, Bell shares two dreams with his wife (Tess Harper), both involving his deceased father. In the first dream he lost "some money" that his father had given him; in the second dream, he and his father were riding horses through a snowy mountain pass. His father, who was carrying fire in a horn, quietly passed by Bell with his head down and was "going on ahead, and fixin' to make a fire" in the surrounding dark and cold. When Bell got there, he knew his father would be waiting. Then he woke up.
So, wouldn't you hire the killer ?