The Coen's back on form

Rating: 9/10 (4 February 2008)

Interesting comment overheard in the cinema on Saturday.
"No Country For Old Men" had ended and the credits were rolling. I was getting up to leave when I heard a guy, who was sitting a few seats away from me, say sadly to his lady, 'Three quarters of that were great, but that last quarter was really sh*t'.
Hmm... Maybe, but only if you want a movie where everything is wrapped up for you in a nice bow and everything is explained. I don't think that the Coen's at full tilt want to give you that at all.
That gentleman in the cinema was missing the point. Really missing the point. Up until the last quarter of "No Country For Old Men" the Coen's are playing within the conventions of the thriller, albeit a beautiful looking, intelligently paced and well acted thriller. (Basically man finds money and another man tries to take the money off him. People die. Mayhem ensues.) During the last quarter of "No Country For Old Men" the Coens mess with the conventions of the standard thriller. Characters arrive late. Crucial events occur off screen. Life and death conversations take place in rooms. The fate of some of the characters is uncertain. A man thinks about how the world used to be.
Maybe. What do I know?
With "No Country For Old Men" the Coen's are back to the kind of form that has evaded them in recent years, with terrible, deliberate crowd pleaser's like "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The Ladykillers". I think that "No Country For Old Men" is a great movie and that it will win the Oscar for best film in 2008 and the Coen's the Oscar for Best Director(s). Trust me. It's going to happen.