The man in the black hat wins

Rating: 1/10 (28 July 2008)

I like good guys killing bad guys (in the end). That's why I see movies. That's why I pay money to see movies. Movies that kill the hero 20 minutes before the movie ends (thereby making the rest of the movie pretty pointless) bore me and waste my time. I know that life is bad. I read newspapers. I watch the news. I know people are evil, self-serving and absolutely corrupt. For two hours, I like to pretend that it can be otherwise. I don't need this crap in my life. I'm going to rent Anne of Green Gables and get drunk. I love Megan Follows.
What I mean is that Bardem's character is almost supernatural in his potency (toward the end of the movie he is referred to by Jones' character as a ghost). This is fine. This follows a long line of movies with villains who are unstoppable to the point of non-realism, of fantasy. As the movie progresses it seems that Brolin's character is to become equal to Bardem's character. Which is also fine. The movie, then, is turned into a kind of who's going to get who. Until the last minute when Brolin's character is killed by thugs other than Bardem. Now the movie no longer has point.
You see, don't you, that it spent the majority of its duration leading up to a Bardem/Brolin confrontation that never materializes. The film simply sputters onward with nowhere to go but more nihilism ending in an old man's confusion and impotence.
It's no good arguing that this is what the movie is really about, because the movie betrays itself and the viewer by pretending to follow the black hat vs. white hat formula, until almost the last moment when the Cohen brothers get to go, "I fooled you like the fascists you are!"
It's no good arguing that this movie's realism excludes the possibility of a pat ending, because the hero and villain are not realistic. They get to act as if possessed with a superhuman ability to withstand the kind of bodily damage that would drop an elephant. I mean, how many times can either guy get shot? So you see, the movie is not realism. It's not even close.
And then we get served a large cup of defeatism, the triumph of irrationality, of evil, of violence. The sort of violent schlock that makes Tarantino and the Cohen brothers so popular in today's America. The sort of violent schlock McCarthy sinks into from time to time--although my friend Turner will say I'm full of sh#t.
But I know about nihilism, and there was nothing for me to do except walk away from the film feeling as if I had been had, taken to the cleaners, egg running down my red and fuming face.
Ah well, perhaps Anne Shirley can lick it off.