2007 neo-noir, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier
Bardem; IMDb /
allmovie. When you find a
bunch of dead guys and a lot of money in the desert, obviously you
take the money. What could go wrong?
Well, it's the Coen brothers filming a Cormac McCarthy novel, so
the answer is "just about everything". I found it very hard to
appreciate this film, because I found its characters unengaging:
here's the innocent in over his head, here's the unstoppable killing
machine, here's the tired old sheriff. But none of them really has a
story; they're all the same people at the end (except for some of them
being dead) as they were at the beginning.
Are we supposed to think that Chigurh is cool? The only pleasure he
gets is from killing, and he doesn't get much from that. The camera
lingers over his preparations, but why should we care about this guy?
He's effectively a less impressive version of the Terminator. Or why
should we care about Moss, who decided to steal the money in the first
place but that's clearly the most interesting thing he's done in his
life? There are some good moments with Sheriff Bell, such as when he's
searching a hotel room believing that the killer may be hiding there…
but in the end nobody learns anything or exceeds what they thought
they could do, or even seems to experience anything very much.
Many people appear to have loved this film but it left me thinking
that there were over two hours that I wouldn't get back.
I talk about this film further on Ribbon of
Memes.