Not bad

Rating: 6/10 (24 November 2009)

I was prepared not to like this. Coen Brother movies are so uneven - sometimes quite good, sometimes stinkers.
But this was good and funny. I laughed out loud about every 5 minutes at some inanity or foolish action.
Still, some of it was extremely weak.
**** SPOILER **** The movie starts in present day Ann Arbor - for no good reason. And nothing about the scene "sets it" in Ann Arbor. It could be Anytown, USA. So what was the point of that? The protagonist's wife falls for his boss. The boss has an artificial arm/hand. To what purpose? Not even a sight gag. Just there. This wasn't funny - just weird, and not weird in the sense of "moving the plot along weird" or "makes the movie more interesting weird." Just as if it were stuck in there for "this should make people laugh weird." Well, it didn't.
The Iraqi journalist Mahmoud gives the protagonist and his mentor his truck. This is not explained why. He just does. And they end up leaving the car in the desert. This is not explained why.
The goats in the desert are "debleated." This is not explained why, nor does it make sense in the plot, as the base is out in the middle of no where, unlike the first instance where the base was Ft. Bragg.
Letting criminals go free in the desert is no kindness. Based upon the previous scenes, there is nothing for hundreds of miles. And yet the prisoners walk out into the desert to their certain deaths. This is not explained why.
Giving soldiers on the FOB who have guns and who drive dangerous equipment LSD, in this movie, leads to no deaths or injuries. This is not explained why. I realize that this is a movie, but the soldiers who are stoned always manage to avoid the path of the various heavy equipment driving recklessly through the base and sometimes through buildings.
Too many weird things like this. Makes it not funny because I was constantly going, "but even in the reality of this movie, this doesn't make sense." So, a "6" - good, but not much better than average.