NEAR FLAWLESS THRILLER

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2019)

Will try to write about the one, but significant miscalculation, at the movie's end - without making this a "spoiler." Here goes: when you get to the final pages in McCarthy's novel, you can see it's winding down, so you begin to read slowly, being sure to take everything in - you can, of course, see that the typing stops in a few paragraphs and you know it's about to end. But when you get to this final scene in the movie version, the viewer has no such advance warning, so as the lead character reaches the end of his speech about a dream he's had, and the screen goes dark, the movie's end seems abrupt and un-satisfying. The Coens could have easily solved this problem by visualizing the dream, showing it with the speaker's voice on the soundtrack. Would have made for a much more cinematic finish. Still, that being said, this is a masterpiece - and one of those rare instances when the Oscar actually did go to the best picture of the year.