No Country for Old Men -- 7/8ths of a great movie

Question from a cash-strapped person: is NCFOM a movie that's worth shelling out the $20 or so and buying now, or should I sit tight until either Christmas or the gf surprises me?

 

Here's why I hated the ending:

There were three central characters, and only one of them had an "ending." Anton walked away.
Llwelwyn (SIC) died, completely off screen, incredibly abruptly.
TLJ talks about a dream.

If two of the central characters had their "fates" played out, I might've been more satisfied.

But for such an awesome buildup, it ended so incredibly irresolutely, and I can't handle that.

 

I didn't even realize it was Josh Brolin who was dead. It took me a few minutes to realize it really was him and that made things sort of fall flat for me.

 

Funny that you describe it like a Tarantino flick. My dad said it reminded him of 'Kill Bill.'

I just watched this the other day and, upon further reflection, didn't like the movie. I was entertained the whole way through until the end and I don't think the rest of the film overcomes that abrupt ending. It was as if the writer didn't know what else to do, so he just ended it.

Some problems I had -- Tommy Lee Jones was great and his final monologue was awesome. But throughout the movie, he's nothing more than a complementary player (who doesn't actually do anything, btw) and the final monologue made me feel like he should have been more important to the movie. Like he should have been the main character. I would have liked to have seen more of his coming to the realization that this is "no country for old men."

Second, Chigurh is presented as "the ultimate bad ass" and is obviously an elite hitman. Yet, Woody Harrelson finds Moss with ease before him and it's the mexicans who kill Moss. Why were we following Chigurh with such intense interest if a couple of schlubs could have accomplished the same thing easily and, in fact, more efficiently (Chigurh missed chances to kill Moss on, what, three occasions? The Mexicans missed once and got him on the second try).

Those two factors made me feel like we wasted our time following this character.

I hate to say it, but maybe I just don't get the Coen Brothers. I thought Fargo was totally overrated and couldn't make it through O Brother Where Art Thou or The Ladykillers.

I loved The Big Lebowski and thought Raising Arizona was decent, but I just don't get all the love for them. I've never been blown away by one of their movies the way many seem to have been.

 

Just saw it this week, and I liked it. It kind of eased us into the typical cat-and-mouse suspense thriller movie, but jerked us back around to abrupt and sometimes uneventful endings. It made it seem a bit more realistic.

The characters were interesting. Moss didn't seem that motivated by the money, rather just needing something exciting to do because he was bored of his factory-work-then-back-to-the-trailer life. Chigur is shit-nuts but is completely motivated by his ideas of fate, which make sense only to him. Sheriff Bell is an old-timer lawman who accomplishes nothing because he's too busy complaining about how different things have become to the point where he only reacts to others around him rather than being proactive.

I think it works. After all, we're still talking about it six months later, so it must have impressed something upon us.

 

To me, it was a great film. I get why people don't like the ending. I'm not wild about it. But it seems unfair to discount a movie I thoroughly enjoyed just because the ending seemed sudden.

 

If you had a great burger, and the last bite found a cockroach, would you be happy?

 

I was talking to a friend who recently watched No Country. He said the movie would have been great if TLJ had killed Chigurh at the end ... but, like many others, his thinking was that the Coen Brothers/McCarthy ending turned a great film into an OK one.

I still say the movie and the ending were great because it wasn't a cookie-cutter Hollywood ending. In real life, the bad guy doesn't always die like at the movies. I loved that Chigurh was still susceptible to the same game of chance he plays with others during the movie (getting slammed into as he's driving off after killing Carla Jean). To me, that scene right at the end was perfect.

BTW - If you want a neatly wrapped story where the bad guys get what's coming, Fargo gives you that satisfaction. I can't decide which of these Coen films I like best.

 

Talk about being late to the party, somehow, this movie had passed me by until it was on one of my pay cable channels last night.

Great, great movie. I liked how Brolin's character died, I liked how the movie ended. A bow being tied around the plot would have kind of missed the point.

The thing I like about the movie is how it embraces the idea that many things we see in our own lives as contemporary are actually eternal. Not only does it embrace it, it's interwoven into how the Coens paced and edited the movie.

TLJ's character (the movie title references him) is the most obvious example of this, especially in his interaction with Barry Corbin late in the movie and the now infamous ending.

But the randomness of Brolin's death, as some have called it, reflects the randomness the affects everyone's lives, whether extraordinary in Brolin's case or mundane in most everyone else's case.

The movie does not end with a bow tied around it, which is pitch-perfect, because no one's lives are lived with a red bow around it either. We all strive for it, but none of us ever actually achieve it. To me, you can't really comes to terms with enjoying life, or for that matter, living your life at all, until one comes to the realization that many things in life can't be explained. Best laid plans of mice and men, etc. ...

Anyway, I thought it was a great film. And the movie buff in me loved the fact that it often paid a kind of thematic homage to other movies set in that part of the world.

At various times, it echoed Charley Varrick, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (the part where Brolin is escaping from the drug gang across the river looked eerily like Slim Pickens' Knockin' On Heaven's Door death scene from PG&BTK), Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, and of course, Blood Simple and Fargo.

 

this has been mccarthy's point forever, i think. and why those who enjoy or love mccarthy's work were so happy to see the coen brothers not only echo or recreate his world on film to keep his POV and not bastardize it for a movie's sake.

like life, his books are not supposed to be easy, safe, or comfortable.

 

My girlfriend hadn't seen this, so I rewatched it with her, recently.

She'd heard me rave about it, and was asking me some questions before we watched it, and here's what I told her:

Pay close attention to the scene with the bad guy and the old man at the gas station. The entire point is right there. The rest just reinforces it.

The coin's lucky, but it got there the same way the killer did. Whatever you do, don't put it in your pocket with the rest of the change, or it will become just another coin.

Which it is.

Everything's chance or everything's fate. Comes to the same end.

Brilliant book, brilliant film.

 

Watched the movie for the second time last night.

Ending was unexpected, but all in all, was a great movie.