No Movie for Old Men

Rating: 1/10 (24 August 2008)

Charged with all the appeal of fingernails on a chalkboard this movie mindlessly wanders about before mercifully ending. Much like Tommy Lee Jones does in this movie as he wanders around mumbling to himself and picking his nose. What a waste of a great actor although his performance did give me a title for this review. Let's start with some of the basics of good film making.
1) Did the movie present strong characters in such a way that the audience cares what happens to them? Nope, there's no one I want to know better nor is there anyone I hate. Much like the rest of the movie they are a 2 dimensional cardboard cutouts moving through a 2 dimensional landscape. the only time the characters really elicit emotion is when they are killed since that probably means they won't be coming back to bore me any more.
2) Is the plot believable enough not to detract from the movie? In this movie there is one absurdity heaped on another. When you combine that with the terminally slow pace of the movie, you'll have lots of time to pick up all the flaws which will destroy the illusion of reality. Here we have a case where huge numbers of people are killed, even police and yet Chighur moves freely about without fear of reprisal. Law enforcement in the states he moves through is apparently all on strike. They don't even bother showing up for running gun battles in the street accompanied by crashing vehicles. Sheriff Bell's vigorous attempts to catch the man who killed his deputy mostly involve drinking coffee with retired lawmen and plodding along to scenes of crimes long after the criminals have left.
Well, I lost enough of my life to this movie just watching it and this is about all I'll lose warning others of it...