Grossly overrated..unbelievably bland

Rating: 3/10 (31 January 2008)

**SPOILERS!**
Naturally I watched this due to all of the hype and praises surrounding it. I just don't get it. Although, seeing the Coen Brothers' name attached to this film, I should have known better. The first film I saw by them was Miller's Crossing.hated it. Finally rented Fargo from Netflix a month ago, watched it, wasn't impressed at allin fact I was annoyed by it. Third time's a charm, maybe? Not by a long shot.
The Coens always have a high level of quirkiness to their films. Everything from the characters to the plot is a little off-kilter. This does NOT always translate into a great, intelligent film. Tarantino also possess this quality with his films and, a lot more so than not, it works. Not the case with the Coens, as their attempts always come off as forced. Stripped of any fluff, 'No Country For Old Men' is a film full of killing and rambling. First there's the hit-man, (Javier Bardem) who barely talks (and when he does, talks about coin tosses and other mundane things), walks around with a oxygen tank and a shotgun with a silencer (didn't know it was possible, but I must admit its kinda cool), blowing locks off doors and killing cops and honest citizens wherever he deems fit with no consequence to his actions from authorities, etc. There's the aging sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) who's becoming more detached from the world every day, due to its increasing insanity. Supposedly the movie is titled around this character, but he's only in about a third of the film, if that. Last but not least, there's the 'good-bad guy' (Josh Brolin), the silhouette you see in the movie's poster with the bag of money & rifle. He's another wanderer who happens to stumble on $2 million and a truckload of drugs, swipes the money and spends the rest of his time AROUND TOWN eluding the aforementioned hit-man who is after him. This is a guy who, while swiping the money, blows off the only remaining survivor's request for water; only to get up out of bed hours later in the middle of the night, fill a container of water and go BACK there with hopes of seeing that same survivor still clinging on to dear life. Needless to say, his hopes were squashed, and his problems multiplied tenfold when the people whose money/drugs were unaccounted for show up. We get an elongated cameo from another character (Woody Harrelson) who has a decent amount of screen time but whose character serves ABSOLUTELY NO PURPOSE to the story. As soon as we're introduced to him, he's done away with. The audience is forced to identify with Brolin's character because we follow him throughout his quest to make out with the money. Only problem is, he meets his fate in the most uninspiring, anti-climatic way possible. We see him alive, *cut*, we hear sirens, *cut*, we see him dead. We can only assume the hit-man got him.
You'll also hear a lot about the ending to this film, if anyone can call it such. In a nutshell, hit-man gets to Brolin's wife, rambles on again about a coin toss (which she fails to participate in), cut to hit-man in a car leaving the scene when a horrible accident occurshe gives a kid $100 for his shirt and he walks away limping and bloody with a bone sticking out his arm. Cut to the aging sheriff again, who is now retired, talking to his wife about a dream he had about his father, black screen, the end. What a bunch of wannabe artsy NONSENSE! If you're going to tell a story, TELL IT! Enough of the spaced-out dialog and characters who do nothing to further the telling of the story. There must be something I'm not getting; 'Fargo' reeked of these attempts at this kind of humor and failed miserably; between beyond-annoying accents and a ho-hum approach to everything by everyone made it one of the most overrated films of the past 10 years. 'NCFOM' suffers from the same affliction. They go above and beyond to make things as 'weirdly fascinating', only covering up the lack of a coherent script and plot. I can suspend my disbelief to a point, depending on what type of film it is. But please, DON'T pass yourself off as a "serious, intelligent crime drama".only to have all these occurrences in your movie that makes absolutely no sense! You mean to tell me NO one gets wind of the hit-man walking around town as obvious as can be.even after he kills a policeman at the police station? I'm not even going to mention how he gets out of the handcuffs. You bring in Woody Harrelson's character whose led out to be some sort of bad ass who's eliminated ever so easilyhe minus well have played the idiot cop who turned his back on a prisoner and was strangled with handcuffs. Brolin waking up and going BACK to the crime scene that HE stole drug money from, taking water with him hoping the Mexican (or whatever he was) is still alive? HOURS later?? Beyond silly, over-pretentious crap, this movie is. I was seriously considering watching it again to see what I missed.but what's the point? The movie is flat-out garbage. How the Coens continue to get over on critics is beyond me.
This will probably win a bunch at the Oscars, and it'll be yet another slap in the face to anyone who goes about life with sense. Then again, the Oscars really don't mean much of anything nowadays.Cuba Gooding Jr. now does Hanes commercials screaming about wearing other guys' underwear, 'Shawshank Redemption' to this day is better than 'Forrest Gump', and no one's heard from Roberto Benigni since 'Life Is Beautiful'. Want to see one of the truly great films of 2007 snubbed by the Academy? Watch 'Gone Baby Gone'. Stay away from this trash by all means.
3/10