No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men is not for everyone, in fact, I’d say it’s only for a very narrow section of the public. I’m sure the Coens are very satisfied with it, you can’t deny the film has a distinctive style, but what good is that when I almost fell asleep? The plot moves forward very slowly, and in some places it feels that it doesn’t move at all. The shots of the desert landscape (room, car…) are beautiful, but they could have been shorter and less static. I must praise Javier Barden’s amazing performance, without it the experience would have been barely half as good. (08/04/2008)

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. (07/12/2008)

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%. (03/12/2008)

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. (03/17/2008)

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). (01/04/2008)