One of the weakest among brilliant Coen films

Rating: 4/10 (26 February 2008)

I'm an absolute fan of the Coen brothers, and think that they represent one of the most imaginative and artistically different movie-making partnerships in the recent decades. The true brilliance of "The big Lebowski", "Barton Fink", "Fargo", "Miller's crossing" or their debut "Blood simple", shows the way to creativity without compromise. On their latest effort "No country for old man" I think they lost that path, the same way as with the misfired "Raising Arizona", and compromises with the film industry, which brought them Oscar nominations and subsequent Best picture award, are sadly evident in this film. The Coen seal is there but it's broken in several places and that ruined the originality of their trade mark approach.
To begin with everything that is wrong with this film, I have to point out, first and foremost, the gaping plot holes that brought the entire story down. Forget the convenient randomness of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), entering the town of all places, just by the motel where Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is hiding the money, so his transponder can start beeping, the movie holds pretty well up to the point where Moss figures why he is being pinpointed each time by Chigurh, and from that point spirals straight down.
First we can't figure why Moss doesn't destroy the transmitter once he realized that this is the reason why he is always found by Chigurh, and especially when he realizes that Chigurh is in the hotel, and that he can pin point the room where Moss is hiding, by following the signal. OK, maybe Moss wants to be found, and have a show down with his pursuer, but than why does he sit right in front of the door, the killer is going to enter, especially knowing that Chigurh turned the hallway lights off. Maybe to have a better shot at him - not likely, and even than, as Moss shoots through the door Chigurh is supposedly standing in front of, just as he blew away the lock with his cattle gun, Chigurh escapes unharmed and is wounded later on in the street. Also, the Woody Harrelson character Carson Wells, is totally undeveloped and surplus in the film. Earlier in the movie we see that he is supposed to be some kind of a specialist in handling extremely dangerous nut jobs like Chigurh, and is paid accordingly, but Chigurgh killed him just as easily as the old man driving the car, at the beginning of the movie!? Than it's never explained how does Wells, find Moss in the Mexican hospital? What tricks and abilities did he use for such intelligence work, being later on, came up behind and shoot as an unsuspecting bozo by Chigurh? Also, back at the high-rise building of the businessman who hired Wells, Chigurh bursts in to find the businessman talking to someone from "accounting" and shoots the businessman in the face. How in the world did he, pass through the entire building with cattle gun along with the gas tank and a shotgun? Nobody bothered to show us.
But the film really falls apart at the denouement point where we expect a show down between Moss and Chigurh, at the end, where Moss is supposed to send away his wife with the money so he'll be able to freely track Chigurh down. After the scene where Moss is talking to a girl by the pool, it appears like a significant part is cut away from the movie with several key scenes missing! Next, we see sheriff Bell driving along and seeing Mexicans getting out of the motel, Moss being shot,and we don't have a first clue what happened and how? Mexicans supposedly found Moss through his mother in law, but than again, how did they know where to wait for Moss's wife and her mother? How does Chigurh appear in a motel room where Moss have been shoot, and why doesn't he kill sheriff Bell, he's killing everybody else, so why not him? And at the last point where the film might have been partially redeemed, the point where Chigurh gets hit by another car, passing through the intersection, and where he should have been killed by an act of strange, absurd chance, that would bring a twist to the end of this film, he walks away to emptiness from which he came in at the beginning. So that summons it up, lots of empty spaces, (including a pointless Tommy Lee Jones monologue at the very end), in a movie that might have been great if the Coens didn't look for industry seal of approval, and the lack of the same gave their previous films so much charm. 4/10