Excellent most of the way through, but with a doubtful ending.

Rating: 7/10 (16 August 2008)

The Coen Brothers, after a decade of middling productions following the (highly overrated, in my opinion) "Fargo", hit a major success in 2007 with their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel. It racked up awards, ultimately winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, among other Oscars. I did not see it until February 2008, when in arrived in theatres on Prince Edward Island.
The film functions on two levels: the first is as a pure thriller, and on that level it is an all-but-unqualified success. The Coens are tremendous filmmakers on a technical level, and so they are able to conjure up a series of stunningly tense set-pieces, pitting various characters against Javier Bardem's stone-cold killer Anton Chigurh. One, particularly, is brilliant: Josh Brolin's character, Llewelyn Mars, sits in his motel room, having found the tracking device placed on his person, and listens as the ominous beeping of the tracking device (which the audience has previously observed in action) approaches: the audience is on pins and needles. A great thriller needs a great villain, and Chigurh is as good a filmic foe as I have seen in many years. He is determined, and his ability to continually keep on the trail of his opponents and absorb pan is almost Schwarzeneggerian. The Coens supply him with some grisly signature weapons as well, from a nasty-looking gun to the prominent air-fired cattlegun. Bardem's performance is quite intimidating. Elsewhere, Josh Brolin and Kelly Macdonald are strong as as his most prominent targets (the latter has a particularly fine scene right at the end).
Then there is the second level, that of a more existential drama, and on that level I am less certain. There are issues of fate, chance, and the like in play here, and the nature of evil (incarnated in Chigurh), and none are really resolved, or, as far as I can see, amount to much. The title refers to Tommy Lee Jones' character's belief that the world is becoming less and less civilized as time passes. However, the movie welcomely bucks this, as Jones' elderly uncle relates that the world has always been a cruel and hard place, and criticizes his 'vanity' at thinking he could really change it. The end is inconclusive, and I could tell that many of the audience in the theatre were not satisfied by the movie's climax (which basically avoids anything climactic). The "evil wins" motif is rather banal.
This is a gripping film experience most of the way through, but the ending does not work as the ending of a thriller, and I never found the other themes particularly well-developed; ultimately, I give it a seven, since it is still first-rate most of the way through, and I know a great many people saw more in the movie then I did.