No Country for Old Men

I don't mind anything about this film, not even the fact that the Coens’ gave more space to Cormac McCarthy's style than to their own. Their contribution to the excellent template is, above all, precise technical packaging and the traditionally great choice of types. I will never forget Bardem's evil eyes, Brolin's mustache and appearance evoke the tough guys of the 1970s, and Tommy Lee Jones is just as scared and old-fashioned as Sheriff Bell is supposed to be. The broken structure of the story, the missing threads of motivation and the denial of violence as cool props - No Country for Old Men is not a matter of great exaggeration, but rather of chilling black humor. It is a portrait of a world that used to have its protectors of good and its firm laws, but now there is nothing left. Perhaps just the coin from 1958. Call it! The Oscar did not miss the mark this year. (17/03/2008)

A deadly thrilling neo-western with ruggedly honest tradition. What the mournful narrator tells is not just a tale of a worthy and evil pursuer, but also a multi-layered testament that old times cannot be brought back. Originality in every step, a maddeningly oppressive silence, and a feeling that this story could have been even a good bit longer. (25/12/2009)

When Hitchcock allowed his protagonist to die in one-third of his legendary movie Psycho and fill the space with other characters, it was considered a revolution in the film industry. The Coen brothers go even further and play with the script, going against all conventions and the expectations of genre fans. In the traditional mainstream film concept, the script has its own rules and is developed almost to perfection. It is known when the first dead body should appear on the scene and how many plot twists should happen to maintain the viewer's attention. The Coen brothers mock their audience and when the climax of the plot is supposed to happen, they make a fool of them. From the perspective of a genre fan, the film lacks any kind of ending. Not just the so-called "open" ending, where the protagonist decides what to do and leaves it up to the viewer's imagination how it turns out. Three-quarters of the film prepares the viewer for the final confrontation between two main unbending characters - and it is tragically and comically thwarted. They introduce characters whose development is in direct contrast to the viewer's expectations (Tommy Lee Jones or Woody Harrelson) and unnecessarily let those with whom the viewer sympathizes die. In this respect, they are original and maybe that was one of the reasons why the academics decided how The Oscars turned out. On the other hand, the film is incredibly captivating with its structure and a series of clever details and individual scenes, but the script is unfinished and some characters are simply untrustworthy. The Coen brothers have never been afraid to depict violence and death, but they went a bit overboard here. Instead of the standard three dead bodies, there is a pile of them and you feel like you are watching a Tarantino film. As Stalin once said, one death is a tragedy, a million then becomes a necessary statistic. The main protagonist is a mass murderer who seems to have escaped from some comic book, and again, I would believe Tarantino more. He doesn't belong in real life. In that battle with the drug cartel, he wouldn't stand a chance by the way. Holding a gas bomb in his hand is too conspicuous and he makes too many mistakes. To truly evaluate the film, it would be good to read Cormac McCarthy's book from 2005, which I have not done. This film is strong in details and individual scenes, but I have quite a few problems with its overall reception. Overall impression: 80%. (12/03/2008)

The ecstatic cries of American critics, confirmed by the Oscar award, about extreme violence are rather pious pleas of all those who have read McCarthy’s novel and have seen something made by the Coen brothers before. The film is a perfect confirmation that the writers are slowly but surely becoming as arid as the desert on the Texas-Mexico border. This stuff was made for them, but a slave adaptation doesn't make a good movie, and if they didn't have those amazing actors (after American Gangster, Josh Brolin wins again), their adaptation would have absolutely lost its meaning. 70% (rounded down due to expectations). (04/01/2008)

I don't give a damn about journalistic glorification, this film is strong in the details, but unremarkable as a whole. Let's shed a tear at the memory of the brilliant Fargo, the Coens have been getting a bit stale in the last four years. I missed a twist (semi-pathologically spoken moralities don't make a film witty), I missed the Coens' greatest weapon, which has always been a strong story, I missed their typical sense of absurdity and exaggeration, I missed quite a lot here. Bardem's assassin, the character that carries the whole, is neither substantial nor interesting enough that I would already, as overseas publicists are doing with gusto, place this essentially very simple film alongside famous classics. I expect something more from an "unforgettable" film than a banal chase and a one-man-show of one violent mind. Sorry, guys. I attribute the mostly ecstatic enthusiasm for this piece to the well-deserved reputation the talented brothers have earned over their career. (09/01/2008)