Very poorly written film

Rating: 1/10 (20 July 2008)

I'd like to rank this amongst some of the worst films I've ever seen. Imagine a 3 hour long film with no introduction or ending, in other words your only watching the middle of a film.
The film is very difficult to follow, characters are never really established enough for you to get to know them or feel any affinity for them. The only real known names in the film are Tommy Lee Jones playing Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (who you hardly ever see) & Woody Harrelson playing Carson Wells (who is in no more than 5 scenes). The main characters are Javier Bardem playing Anton Chigurh (who I've never heard of) & Josh Brolin (playing Llewelyn Moss) who is only famous for being the son of James Brolin.
Some how this pile of rubbish managed to win 4 Academy Awards (Best Picture which made me laugh - it must have been up against some right utter trash, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay which is also laughable because essentially all they did was film the book this movie is based on & it also won best supporting actor for Javier Bardem) and I wondered if the Acedmy were watching the same movie I was.
If the book is the same as the film then I'm surprised it was ever made into a movie as it's a very poor story indeed. The basic idea is good enough, that a man accidentally finds money & drugs after a drug sale goes wrong & everyone involved gets killed. Moss doesn't want the drugs but he does take the money but the people who were behind buying the drugs want their money back.
Basically the rest of the film is a chase movie from that point onwards with Moss & everyone close to his life being pursued by the man hired to retrieve the money by the people who were buying the drugs who is killing anyone in his way on the journey.
Ed Tom Bell is the local sheriff from the town near where the drug sale went wrong & he is tracking Chigurh who is searching for the money stolen by Moss. The pursuit is long & violent, pretty mindless and quite boring. You can't just expect a movie to be good because 1 guy is killing a lot of people, it has to have an actual story or protagonists you know & care about.
And thats where the movie suffers, never knowing enough about Moss's character. With Bell we at least get a bit of insight into who he is from his voice-overs & scenes with his wife & employees but he's not the lead or even the 2nd lead character & we never get told enough about either of them. We learn almost nothing about Chigurh's character, only a short scene where Wells is hired to find & stop Chigurh (even the reasons behind this are never fully explained).
The ending of the movie is also very weak & difficult to understand. Apparently Moss is killed (I didn't even realise this, thats how hard the film is to follow!), we never know if Moss's wife lives or what happens to the money. We never know how Moss's mother in law dies, who hit Chigurh's car & why.
The film ends very badly, Chigurh walking away from a car accident & Bell wondering how he'll pass the time now he has retired.
Not recommended as there is no start or actual end to the movie.