Powerful Book Adaptation with Fumbled Ending

Rating: 8/10 (1 January 2008)

Cormac McCarthy's book No Country for Old Men is an incredible story so very well told. I listen to audio books and this one made me want to keep driving. I could hardly wait for the morrow's commute.
It's one of the classic thriller story lines. An ordinary person accidentally gets caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man is a nail-biter example of this genre. A Simple Plan, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, is another.
And like any exceptional story, No Country has memorable characters. Llewelyn Moss is the unfortunate man who while hunting comes across a dope deal gone bad in the expansive back country of South Texas, and ends up with a satchel containing two million dollars in cash. There's a lesson here, though it is never stated as such: if you ever find a couple million dollars that are not yours, it's best to just stay out of it. Even though everyone involved in the transaction appears shot up and pretty much finished off, Moss knows that there will likely be others coming for the money. Little does he know how bad one of these others is.
The guy who keeps you sitting straight up in your seat, and may keep you awake at night after, is Javier Bardem as Anton Chiguhr. Think sugar and chigger, and you have this pathological, human version of The Terminator, relentless in pursuit and seemingly indestructible. Nothing sweet about this man whose conscience is dead and determination unstoppable. Your heart rate increases every time he's on the screen.
No Country for Old Men has been receiving fabulous reviews. The Coen brothers (Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?) wrote the screenplay and directed this first rate film. Like another current book adaptation, Charlie Wilson's War, there is much that has to be sifted out and only hinted at, lest we have something tiresome to watch after a while. The Coens were successful at creating the emotional tension that is generated by the book.
How did they do it? One noteworthy item is the total absence of a music soundtrack. They deserve high praise for avoiding the commercial temptation to make a music bed that would generate additional revenues afterward. Instead, they went the direct opposite way with this film. No music, no sound at all in the opening or closing credits. No fake strings section to tip viewers off that something bad is coming. The tension is created totally by the intersection of characters and circumstances. And it does get intense.
In terms of execution the film was flawless. Congrats to the Coens for their ability to bring everyone together and pull off this kind of feat.
But there were a number of problems for me with this film adaptation. First, Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. I mean, I just couldn't get past that this was Tommy Lee Jones playing a caricature of himself. He has been in too many movies where he's this hard boiled veteran whose seen too much of life. It is through his eyes that we see the story unfold. As a central character he plays this role well, but I know him as an actor from The Fugitive to Men In Black and, gosh, couldn't we find anyone else to do this? Sorry, guys. That's how it was for me.
Second, some have criticized the short amount of time Woody Harrelson is on screen. Yep. He is a more important character in the book. Like William Hurt's brief appearance in Syriana, it was not necessary to have such star power here. O.K., it maybe sells more tickets at the box office? I really liked this character in the book, and Harrelson does play Carson Wells the bounty hunter very well, but I just don't know.
I consider both of these criticisms relatively minor compared to my one major criticism. It simply ended too fast in too confusing of a manner. I think a tight, fast ending is usually great in films so that they do not drag on after the final rush. The problem here is a tight, fast and confusing ending. If I had not read the book, I would not have known what happened. And I am not talking about the scene where Chiguhr is hit by the car. I'm referring to the preceding homicides that end the cat-and-mouse drama.
The reason this is a problem is that, in my opinion, the last emotion one should have after this kind of a thrill ride is that same relief you get when the roller coaster slams back into the station and they unlatch the mechanisms that keep you in the car. Relief. Catch your breath. Instead of a big "wow," I left the theater perplexed and disappointed, with jumbled thoughts. Instead of being in awe at the way they created such a fabulous film, I walked out baffled, dampened by the lack of clarity in the films last scenes. This should not have happened.
I still think it a powerful film and worth seeing if you like this kind of story. It will put you on the edge of your seat.