No film for everyone

Rating: 6/10 (25 May 2009)

"No country for old men" is extremely well-directed and the acting really stands out.
I love how most of the back-story is only implied at and left to the viewer to piece together. The pacing is slow and the scenery minimal, yet none of this makes for a boring movie, on the contrary.
Where it falls short, is relevance and at times credibility. I'll give a few examples.
Credibility:
If you find 2 million dollars of drug money, what kind of moron would you have to be to return to the crime scene in order to assist a dying man there you left in the first place. Not very credible. It seems more like a plot contrivance to initiate the hunt.
Running from a truck at night in the desert? And winning?
Woody's character finds the main character in 3 hours and the hidden money one hour later in a very unlikely hiding place. Really? He's one clever puppy!
Relevance:
There are a lot of scenes, characters and dialogues that seem to go nowhere. Tommy Lee Jones does little more than think aloud about "these days" and what role does Woody Harrelson's character fulfill? What does he contribute?
The total breakdown of the film came when the lead character is killed off near the end, creating a huge void that could have been interesting, but isn't filled at all. Instead the villain gets into a car accident and the sheriff retires and dreams about dad.
Now you can argue that is probably how it would unfold in real life. However, this "true to life" theme doesn't correlate with the lack of credibility I mentioned before.
During the film, you feel this underlying tension that seems to be building up to something. Instead, towards the end, it unravels into banality, leaving me with a feeling of doubt as to why I bothered investing time into characters that wound up nowhere.
In short, it's a memorable film with good emotions and powerful scenes, but with a very ambiguous ending. Not for everyone.