Definitely overrated, but a solid film despite the issues I have with it

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 2019)

I wanted to love No Country for Old Men. After seeing that it won best picture and best director, I thought it would be amazing. However, I only found it to be good, certainly nowhere near the "masterpiece" that some claim it to be.
I found the biggest issue with the movie to be the plot. It doesn't all necessarily make sense, and in the end seems incredibly pointless. Josh Brolin's character, Llewelyn Moss, stumbles across a drug deal that had gone terribly wrong, and he appeared to be the only one alive on the scene to take the now unsupervised two million dollars. He takes the money for himself, which leads to an incredibly bloody hunt Javier Bardem's character Anton Chigurh leads in an attempt to get the money from Moss for the people who had hired him. This is the basic plot of the film. Chigurh, however, is a complete psychopath who essentially kills for fun. So, the longer the chase goes on, the larger the body count. The plot, however, seems to wander quite a bit, and seems more focused on how sadistic and twisted Chigurh is, rather than the actual story that was set up. It seems to me that the plot is just there to get us from one bloody scene to the next, and is just an excuse for all of the extreme and excessive violence. If the film was more focused on the plot, it could have made for a much more interesting film, though it still dod end up having many intriguing moments.
We also have so, so many things going on at once in this movie. Outside of the main plot, we have Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Bell, who is tracking this case as well as questioning his purpose at this point in his career. This, of course, leads to many sentimental moments as he thinks about the amount of violence going on that he is unable to stop (he is just a little late on the crime scene several times in this film, and unable to prevent the violence). It felt like this part of the movie was slightly disconnected from the rest, and though it provides some thought-provoking messages, it doesn't really justify its inclusion in the film. We also get Woody Harrelson's character showing up later in the movie, who seems to be against both Chigurh and Moss. We don't spend much time with him before he is just another one of Chigurh's victims, though. He really only showed up to give both Moss and the audience an idea of just how bad Chigurh is. Other than that, there isn't much of a purpose for his character in the film. As you can see, the movie gets sidetracked from it's actual plot in so many ways and is just overloaded with plot points and characters that don't necessarily add anything of value to the film.
I have to say, the film's ending was the biggest disappointment and made me question the point of the movie in the first place. It takes a wild turn in the final half hour when Moss is suddenly killed. This is for some reason off-screen, and just doesn't make sense for the movie at all. With that, the movie is basically over, but then there's more, because of course it's not good enough to just kill Moss, his wife must die as well. Oh, and her mom. A depressed Bell retires after realizing there's simply nothing he can do against the violence that he tried so hard to prevent. And then, for no particular reason, Chigurh gets in a brutal car crash, and then just... walks away? At this point I'd given up on any kind of closing for this movie, but then we get the strangest ending ever: Bell talking to his wife about his odd dreams. So many people have talked about the "deep meanings" behind all these moments, but that's not what I got out of it at all. Instead, I just sat there confused. Nothing about the end of the movie made sense, and I just sat there wondering what the previous hour and 40 minutes or so was for in the first place, as it didn't seem to matter at the end.
The directing style of the film is slow, gritty, and intense, from the dialogue to the way it's shot. This sometimes works well enough, but the movie can often feel a bit lifeless. This feeling is further enhanced by the lack of music in the film, which doesn't seem to have the same effect they intended it to have, and just ends up making it feel dull. Still, I mostly enjoyed the directing of this movie, and there was some great cinematography through it all, but I just couldn't help but feel that it was lacking something that might give it more life.
I have to say, the suspense scenes is this movie were excellent. The camera angles and lack of sound except for tiny noises were perfectly executed and have you on the edge of your seat the entire scene. There are many sequences just like this that work really well.
The acting in this film is nothing short of outstanding. Josh Brolin gives a very strong performance in what I would say is the leading role (though it's hard to really say). He is perfectly believable as his character, who is selfish and not entirely likable, but just enough so that we want him to survive the terrible situation he's in. Javier Bardem is incredible and gives an unsettling sense of realism to his psychopathic character. He is a genuinely menacing villain that strikes fear into the audience. Tommy Lee Jones is also very believable in his role as the aging sheriff questioning the future of his career. Woody Harrelson gives a great performance as well, albeit with much less screen time than those mentioned above. Overall, the all-star cast does not disappoint.
No Country for Old Men is overall a solid film, though slightly overrated. It is far from the spectacular film I have heard many claim it to be, thanks to an overall lifeless feel to the movie, an unfocused plot, and a largely disappointing ending. However, the direction, suspense, and acting were all spectacular, and the villain was incredibly menacing and well-written. Through all this, the film ends up being good despite the several problems it has.