Fairly Entertaining... Very Weak Script

Rating: 5/10 (17 March 2008)

So I gave the Coens another chance. I'm one of those guys who after 2 or 3 disappointments always VOW to never watch another movie from such director(s), but then almost always fail and find myself watching the new stuff they bring to the table (I said almost, cause I've had it with Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez). The movie started and I had fairly high expectations after all the hurrays it's been receiving. My feeling that this was one of those movies that self-important critics like to put in the spotlight as THE new masterpiece was sent to the very back of my mind. The ambiance, I like, the pace at the beginning, was good. Bardem's acting convincing (not so chilling as I read everywhere, but good nonetheless). The whole story ahead seemed very interesting, until we find the Mexicans... The slow pace (which I liked... not every movie has to be a frantic teenage million shots per minute MTV video) gave me a chance to savor what was happening, and I was contemplating in my mind what would I do with the money found, with practically no witnesses (just that thirsty guy, most surely dead by now) and with a head start over everybody who would be looking for it. But then, out of WEAK writing, the character gets up from bed and goes to serve a glass of water to some dying man in the desert! What a STUPID idea. And I don't mean the character's idea. Unless they wanted to present the character as a mentally impaired person, or just a total moron, there was no way ANYBODY would have done that. I can think here of many better ways to give the Mexicans a way to know who this guy was: 1. Make him go back to KILL the dying man; maybe he gets scared that he may live long enough to tell his friends about the mustached gringo who came earlier, or whatever. Maybe he realizes that he screwed up by leaving that guy as a witness, but to come back many hours later to help a guy barely breathing? C'mon! 2. So, you want to make this character more likable, less dark than someone willing to kill an unarmed and dying guy just for his filthy money, OK, that's easy... make him greedy enough to come back for MORE money. Maybe the dying Mexican is armed and he has another bag full of money (split the 2 millions in 2 parts, he founds 1 million under that tree with that dead Mexican, and the other million is between the dying Mexican in his truck). So, he has the option of killing the Mexican and get the second million, but that's to mean for him, so he settles for just the 1 million he found. Goes back home, and figures that maybe the other Mexican may have died already and there's another million up for grabs.. yeah, it's pretty dumb to go back after so many hours (he should have stayed waiting for the Mexican to die) but not as dumb as taking water to the dying fella! From then on, I knew that the movie was going to be a series of illogical situations forced fit for the sake of whatever the directors wanted to show us. Fortunately, it wasn't so, but that spoiled the movie for me: illogical or inconsequential scenes/characters thrown in for the sake of nothing! So, we have Woody in a Texans suit, very bad-ass, he gets killed without showing us why he thinks he's such a bad-ass. We have Tommy Lee Jones acting the same character that he seems to know lately... is he a real sheriff nowadays? Because I've seen at least 3 movies lately with him and this character, the same one! He's after the killer, but I hardly think that he will get him sitting and talking nonsense in the local cafeterias. The bad guys, the ones who "hired" "Sugar" (whatever his correctly spelled name is). What kind of morons hire a psychopathic killer? Now, here's another stupid idea from this script. The Woody Harrelson's character is apparently thrown in to let us know that Sugar is a real crazy M.F. He will kill Death if the Reaper looks him in the eye, or so he says. Sugar seems to be a pretty bad ass but too psycho for the job (for ANY job), and everybody seems to know this, but they keep hiring him!? Gimme a break. And the Mexicans... well, they - SPOILER - kill the main character in a hotel in El Paso... but that seems to be of no importance for the directors. I wasn't expecting a big shoot-out, or a grandiose action scene where maybe he would get killed, but at least a little dignity to this character would have showed him being killed, not just dead in the floor... I actually didn't recognized him at first (I guess I'm bad at recognizing dead guys), and my wife was the one who told me "they snuffed him already".. I was like, what? no way, that's a Mexican, don't you see the moustache. But not only Mexicans wear moustaches in this movie... And at the end, the accident........... so, what? This movie is just a big pond of pseudo profundities that will make you feel that your watching the new big thing in crime drama... if you belong to the club of the "critic's watch". For normal people, if we wear sunglass to avoid the extra shining added by marketing, this is just a fairly entertaining movie.