Coen Brothers Redux
No Country For Old Men is a wonderful Tommy Lee Jones vehicle built on top of yet-another Coen brothers horror/noir film. Whilst the Academy handed it the top award, I can't go that far. I don't mind the film wandering off in the last half-hour, upsetting audience expectations. It's just that on reflection I don't find Javier Bardem's hit-man that interesting -- and I sure don't much care to spend as much time as the Coen's do on his self-surgical abilities. (Is there much point to these scenes except to demonstrate good practical special effects?).
Once you get past that characters' violence, he's just another lone-biker-of-the-apocalypse representing implacable fate. And the coin-tossing and stun-gun, while prominent in other reviews, are not particularly relevant to the plot.
The normative cast - Josh Brolin and Kelly MacDonald - are quite fine, but their fine acting only serves to further the story rather than illuminate much of anything.
Which leaves me with Tommy Lee Jone's monolgues and panoramas of the Texas wilderness. And I like that just fine.
Posted by netrc at February 26, 2008 06:14 PM