Complex but flawed masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (25 April 2011)

This is a rare (perhaps unique) occasion when I can read all the 1-star and 10 star reviews and partially agree with both polarised camps. After my first viewing, I thought "WTF?" but the film haunted me afterwards which made me want to view it again. The images are powerful and the bleak message "Life's no fair" is far from the usual Hollywood stuff.
The film is rich in intentional ambiguities such as repay various viewings. The scene in which Tom Lee Jones enters the cordoned off motel thinking that Chugar may be present, is a wonderful example of the power of film. On the other hand, there are occasions when the confusion is a result of an inadequate explanation, such as why Wells does not retrieve the money bag. Details like this matter.
My other gripe with the movie is that it loses energy in the last twenty minutes. Perhaps this is a result of following the source novel. But films are not novels, they have a different dynamic. Some of the wordiest exchanges come in this part including the introduction of a new character in a scene which is strangely isolated from the rest of the film. But I have no problem in them in themselves, merely in their placement at this late stage in the film.
Some feel cheated that the protagonist (or the character they imagine to be the protagonist) dies off-screen and unglamorously, not even at the hand of his enemy. But this arbitrariness is the theme of the film and thus a fitting end.
This is a truly innovative and important film and one of the few Oscar winners which will stand up to future generations.