No Country For Old Men

1/4 stars

Having already heard the generous praise of this movie from all corners, I spent its entire two hours looking for something to like about it. Sadly, I was unsuccessful. This film has no strong themes, no real character development, almost no music, and no resolution. Not to say that it wasn't well made, that it didn't effectively establish suspense and that it wasn't at least somewhat engrossing, but does that matter? Are those qualities supposed to be enough? In this film, the characters are their actions, nothing more. Like just about everyone else, I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers' Fargo. This is not that film. It lacks the moral center, the subtle interactions between people, the conflict of ideals, and dozens of other things that made Fargo so good. Though the Tommy Lee Jones characters shares some traits with Frances McDormand's, he isn't really a full fledged character, so much as a mouthpiece for an unrealistically bleak worldview. Likewise, Bardem's character is merely an embodiment of this. The fact that he runs around flipping a coin doesn't make him an "agent of fate" as has so often been stated, it merely means that he thinks of himself as one. Though Bardem's performance is good (at what little he's given to do), the character isn't original, just another manifestation of the brainless Hollywood villain who runs around blasting everything in sight. It's as if they thought that by letting him stand unopposed they were creating a new and ingeniously original character. Having considered what the movie has to offer, I see no reason to move from my initial judgement coming out of the theater. No Country For Old Men is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Written February 4, 2008.