Just when you think there might be a story, Poof! It's Gone!

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2007)

This review may contain a spoilers, I'm not giving a summation of the movie plot here, but be forewarned, for your own information, that I might make references and/or hints to the storyline in this review.
This movie isn't so much as a movie as it is an anecdote. It's like watching some dismal abyss of a film, with no plot, no real ending, and just a depressing story that basically comes down to no discernible resolve.
The actor's are spot on, Tommy Lee Jones is as good an actor as anyone, he's always suited as the strong, masculine, and wise individual salted with the experience of ten men's lives. It is a role that he is very suited for, and in the last 15 years or so, from the role he plays in the various US Marshals series to the beyond his expectations of years in Rules of Engagement, etc; he is very much the tired old veteran who feels he has lived beyond the expectation of his life, and much of the movie you feel that reflection in his acting. Javier Bardem is clearly the self absorbed evil character that so many movies have, and yet he never has any closure. We never get a sense that justice has reacted to his narrow misses with death.
Josh Brolin plays a convincing role at times, but I take issue with certain points in the movie. !!SPOILER!!WARNING!!SPOILER!! For example, at one point Brolin appears in the wild to be a successful and talented tracker. He portrays someone who is not so much intelligent as he is wise to his surroundings and the fragile nature of life. And yet he misses a deer he's hunting (why is he in the desert in the first place is beyond me). Then when he revisits the scene of the various trucks scattered upon a drug deal gone awry, he doesn't bring his rifle nor his binoculars? Why would you approach a situation where Drug money is clearly involved without a long range rifle, and more importantly no ability to defend yourself? How smart do you have to be to dump a bag full of money for a new bag? Have none of these people considered that there might be some kind of tracking device? Brolin saw the locater earlier. What did he think it was for, Radio Control Cars??? I kind of feel like this is one of those movies that got cut too many times before the film reached the studios, and as a result we're left with a story that doesn't have a plot line. We're left with no explanation really of who orchestrated the Heroin deal, why it went bad, more so at first it appears that Woody Harelson is some photographic memory genius and then gets ambushed by Bardem. How did Javier track him? Spidey sense? Sixth Sense? Did he invoke the Great Spirit from beyond? Come on.... at least give some kind of detail on how and why Woody is even involved? Why would Woody even leave the money untouched? Six out of ten is gracious, only because the acting is so good, but next time, if the movie needs to be thirty minutes longer to get a story across, do it. Because this movie is a mess. I think this must be how everyone at the season ending of Entourage felt when they screened Vinnie's cluster-you-know-what of a movie....
Great acting, Great actors, but a story that is about like watching Happy Gilmore take a swing at the puck....