On N List of Movie Reviews
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No Country for Old Men (2007)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
3/20
3/20:
This one won Best Picture? *eyes roll*
There must have been five thousand such films the last seven decades that nearly all are identical in one way or another.
Having handled the same theme, The French Connection and
Dirty Harry remain the gold standard.
No Country for Old Men doesn't break new ground and only has one evil character with several quirks
which isn't good enough to sustain my interest. Okay, this dude uses an air gun to blow out door locks and kills
people without alarming others. Yeah, wake me up when the reality switch has been turned on.
For a Cohen brothers picture, it's strangely less verbose and faster paced than I expected. That's a refreshing change,
and I prefer this one over Blood Simple although Fargo is
its closer relative. For two hours, I was somewhat gripped by the action, but the longer the chase went on, the more pointless
the movie became.
Plenty of stupid moments abound such as Moss running away from fast-moving trucks in the middle of night and then, all of
a sudden, jumping into the river with sun that's already up. Later, Moss is shot and is thus bleeding profusely while he's near
the Texas-Mexico border; within a day or two after being treated at some Mexican hospital, he's miraculously fine. This is the
early 80's we're talking about here.
Josh Brolin isn't bad by moving things along, yet his character is too good to be true. I don't believe all
of the bullshit that he's able to pull off. Instead, it's Javier Bardem who steals the show, but he's no Oscar winner,
showing zero character development while losing momentum once Brolin's character is killed. Again, I hate how they're
portrayed as supermen who can withstand bullets and still manage to keep going in top form. It's patently ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones looks out of it and appears ready to retire. He plays the most pointless character of the show.
I don't know why he's cast, having been rendered nonessential after the first scene and then rapidly 100%
useless toward the end. Now, the ending...what the hell is that?
Woody Harrelson shows up, says, "Hey, I'm still around," and gets bumped quickly thereafter. At first, his character seemed
to know how to deal with the killer, yet he turns out to be worthless just like the sheriff from the middle of nowhere in
West Texas. So, Woody Harrelson and Tommy Lee Jones were in the film solely for their star power?
All in all, No Country for Old Men is the kind of film that pseudo-intellectuals and morons alike love to masturbate to.