No Country for Old Men

That's what I call courage — making a whole movie with no music. What's interesting is that I didn't mind at all. Otherwise, the Coen brothers play a classic game of cat and mouse, arming the cat with an air pistol (amazing idea by the way) and the mouse with a shotgun loaded with tent stakes. The atmosphere is built brilliantly, and the insertion of the philosophizing Tommy Lee Jones gives the story the right flair. The Oscars for Bardem and both directors are definitely deserved. I'm a little surprised about the award for best motion picture, but it's good that the golden statuette was given to this type of movie again. A slightly weak five stars. (26/02/2008)

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)

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)

It’s a cheesy thing to say, but... the book is better. Considerably better. A return to the peak of their skills for the brotherly directing duo? Not at all. More like remaining deep in the shadow not only of McCarthy’s book, but mainly in their own shadow, which is that much worse. Which is a little paradoxical in view of the fact that from the very beginning this was an almost slavish word for word adaptation without any ideas or invention of their own. The Coens are stagnating in terms of creative talent. The whole movie is terribly “readable". If you know their movies, then you will know exactly when to expect what shot, when the camera won’t move, when the next “surprising" cut to another scene will come. What makes it even worse is that the opportunity that Cormac McCarthy offered them in the shape of his existentially moralizing modern day western might not come along again. I can’t deny the perfect atmosphere evocation by means of long takes and perfectly exploited silence. Also they managed to choose an excellent cast. But the mistake that drags it to the bottom of mediocrity is the absolute neglection of the character of Sheriff Bell. His tired old-man’s puttering from one place to the next seems superfluous in this movie. While in the book his storyline full of moral dilemmas over the state of society full of paradoxes is the best part. And then there is the fact that the sudden cut at the end doesn’t fit at all - ok, it’s the same as in the book, but without what preceded it. Tommy Lee Jones’ role is simply worthless. Does what I wrote above that this is a bad movie? No way, but it isn’t really good either. (20/01/2008)

A very different and original film. The Coens have finally stopped messing around with the awkwardly rough comedies that I found so desperately boring and instead made a hard-hitting film without humor, with an atmosphere that could be cut with a knife and action scenes that could be in a film textbook; without a single slow-motion shot, absolutely unpredictable, raw, brutal, realistic, and excellent. The only thing that bothered me was the storyline with the peculiar policeman Tommy Lee Jones. His lamenting over the old times that will never return somehow didn't fit well with the tough story about two tough guys competing for a hefty bundle of money. (12/07/2008)