Is this the Sopranos? - **Spoiler Alert**

Rating: 6/10 (21 November 2007)

There are 3 acts in a given movie. The setup, the complication, and the resolution. This screenplay smells as though it has been simmering over time with rewrites and re-imagining. The first two acts are classic "Blood Simple" mechanics of messy violence and greed. You could almost see this as the world of "Fargo", where killing sprees seem to be commonplace. Here, we're back in the slow south, a favourite setting for the Coens. The villain is worth the ticket price alone, a truly well cast and twisted killer that uses a novel device to eliminate any obstacles. The setting is also fun, set in 1980, you are immersed in the old Texas towns like in the original "The Getaway". Tommy Lee Jones, who is a main character, gets very little screen time. Josh Brolin is the archetypical everyguy. He makes (mostly) smart decisions once he discovers a stash of drug money. But it is Chigurh, the villain, that dominates the mood of the piece, and will certainly be talked about in the future. There lots of 'gotchas' that make you jump, and the well crafted sequence of events are fun to watch as they play out. So you are juiced through the 1st and 2nd acts, only to be given a different outcome.
**Minor Spoilers ahead** The 3rd act is definitely unpredictable, so one can be assured that it won't be the same shootout on the rooftop that you've seen a hundred times. What happens instead, without us first realising it, is that basically the end of the 2nd act is the end of the movie, and the subsequent scenes are like "what ever happened to..." And again, it is not what you think. Which brings us back to Tommy Lee Jones, a tired old Texas Sheriff who chooses his own happy ending, giving the audience a different closure than they were expecting. Think of the finale of "The Sopranos". **End of Spoilers**
So you are guaranteed to be talking about this ending when you walk out of the theatre, it may be a good thing. For some, however, there may be more of reaction that this is an art film disguised as a thriller. My final summation is that it is a some of both, 2 acts of thriller and 1 act of art film. That tips the scale enough to give this a 6 out of 10.