Gripping but ultimately disappointing

Rating: 6/10 (12 April 2008)

Overall the movie was a little disappointing given the hype and the accolades.The film is often gripping and the actors do an excellent job given the lack of dialogue but I found it depressing. It's not a movie I would want to see again.
Josh Brolin plays a welder who comes across a drug deal gone wrong. He escapes with $2 million of cash belonging to some Mexican gangsters. The main bad guy is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) a psychopathic hit-man with a bad haircut. Brolin is chased across west Texas by Anton who wants to recover the money. A lot of people die and it's not always clear why. Tommy Lee Jones plays an ineffectual sheriff-philosopher who fails to stop the carnage. Depending on your viewpoint Anton Chigurh is either a deranged lunatic or an instrument of the devil. Either way, a couple of hours in his company doesn't give you a better understanding of the human condition or what motivates him. The film peters out at the end and you are left wondering about the film's message. It also gives the impression that people in west Texas talk slowly and live in poverty.
Many acclaimed U.S. directors achieve their greatest critical successes making movies about monosyllabic gunmen who kill indiscriminately. Gratuitous violence is starting to seem like a form of pornography, but Tarantino and Scorcese have shown it's an easy way to make an acclaimed movie. You don't need to bother with eloquent speeches or require much of a plot. You just need a creepy killer and some imaginative butchery. One can only speculate wonder how future generations will view the honors heaped on this type of film and our fascination with mindless violence.