Good, but not quite good enough

Rating: 7/10 (12 April 2008)

I sat down to watch this last night hoping that it might live up to the Oscar hype given. The film just barely misses the mark. For the first 80% I was enthralled, pulled into the movie universe as we watch an average guy try his best to hold onto a fortune he finds in the desert. He is pursued by an obsessive compulsive and twistedly normal psychopathic killer played flawlessly by Javier Bardem... The character is smart and haunting... As I watched Llewelyn Moss attempt to stay alive I was rooting for him all the way, the film wants you to invest in the character, otherwise why introduce him and his wife as so central to the plot.
The thing I'm complaining about is the unceremonious and unemotional end to Llewellyn the film delivers, never even verbally establishing his death as though the character we've come to cheer on never existed... The films cold distant way of dealing with the characters death seriously hurt the film, had it been an emotionally satisfying demise that led the story along (toward an equally satisfying climax) than it would have been okay...
They kill off the character, his wife, his wife's mother, and leave us with Tommy Lee Jone's character Ed Tom Bell (excellently played by Jones) to follow, but rather than have Bell struggle to and eventually catch or kill the villain he gets close and then retires...
Anton Chigurh, the killer, than goes free... the audience thinks karma will come around and are teased when Anton gets into a car accident, but he walks away... THE END? I've spent two hours of my life caring for characters that are wistfully killed off and then the villain walks free and the last remaining main "good" character sits back and retires? And this film won BEST PICTURE!? The acting is fantastic, the plot smart (most of it), and the characters and dialog well written, but with so unsatisfying an ending I dropped the film down to a 7 out of 10, it just doesn't live up to the hype...