Films/DVD Asylum

I loved it. Fantastically done. Rating = A+

24.234.156.158

Enophile

In Reply to: RE: Just saw "No Country for Old Men:" posted by tinear on November 24, 2007 at 14:29:39

Hey, Tin!

I am absolutely sure that if we were sitting around talking about the movie in person, your opinion of it would skyrocket.

The dialogue was absolutely perfect and there were so many scenes that would provide for rich conversation, I can't think of how it could have been better.

This will be a movie that stays on my mind for a long time. Even the premise that sets the action in motion is worthy of mulling over with some movie buddies.

There were also plenty of, "Well, why did that character do that?" parts, as well. I bet we could go through a couple bottles of wine in the time it would take to really compare notes. Not many movies could give up such riches for enjoying the "after" part of the film.

I'm going with "great movie."

Follow Ups:

Well, okay. If ever you're in SW Florida, - tinear 11:46:22 11/28/07 (1)
let's get together at my place, rent it, and see!
I thought I expressed how much I appreciated the film and that added to my frustration at the ending. We were set up for a much different film. Since there is a major amount of convention in stories like this, the viewer expects the director to play by those rules. Breaking them destroys that bond, the trust, that allows for suspension of belief, for the trust that allows it.
Shame on the Coens. I haven't read the book but if Cormac similarly set up the false ending, he is to be horse-whipped.
SPOILER
I had one very large problem with one part of the film: when the pick-up began to chase the guy towards the river. It was almost on him and somehow he outran it, all the bullets? Poorly thought out, which is NOT usual for the Bros. Coen. It just seemed so... unreal in a sense of the world in which it was taking place. All that seeming realism and then a miraculous escape. The scene wherein he crawled from the water, dried his weapon, re-loaded, and shot the dog is a classic, however.
- Actually, I don't think we were set up for a showdown. - Harmonia 20:44:57 11/30/07 (0)
  Au contraire.
  
  Even though it was the Coens and McCarthy, you presumed a more conventional thriller structure than was actually there. We would ordinarily assume that with such sharply drawn characters there was gonna be a face-off between Tommy's Sherriff Bell and Javier's assasin Chigurg. We coulda been right...if they were doing a Blood Simple... but neither they nor we were in that country this time.
  
  NCFOM wasn't headin' that direction and the filmmakers told us that from the git go. You notice all the dead dogs in close-up in the first reel??? They weren't there for set dressing. All those stories about Uncle so 'n so getting shot and the feller havin' the bullet bounce of the skull of a steer he was tryin' to slaughter and cripple hisself for life? I mean...did you think this stuff was just color? Did you think the flick was about Llewelyn's heist? Think about the title.
  
  Neither the Coens nor (especially) Cormac McCarthy were too interested in tying up loose ends. Note that TLJ never interacted directly with the other main protagonists until the El Paso motel, where he and Bardem pass like ships in the night. Dead giveaway. (Pun intended.)
  
  Yup, in the land where the landscape alone can freeze men hearts, this movie is about bad choices, but especially about Fate And Men's Souls.
  
  Greed made Moss stupid, even though he was smart and resourceful, and that once mistake rippled ever outward through the film. Woody's character had all the bravado and confidence of experience, and the blessing of dubious morals. But look where that got him. Poor Sherriff Bell has had enough of bad juju but it's seeped into his bones, it's a part of him and he can't escape it. Looking at dear old dad, it's probably in his DNA, in the Bell lawmen like dark eyes and receding hairlines. The implacable Chigurh, ever resourceful and indominatable, stripped of conscience and with no recognizable humanity to deter him from his goals continues to cut his swathe through baddies and innocents alike. Bell & Chigurh glance off each other but only Sherriff Bell lives with that encountrt. This old world is big enough, and cold enough, to excompass them both, much to the Bell lawmen's sorrow.
  
  This adaptation was pretty faithful to the book (maybe too faithful, too literary for some), and though we might wish for a different resolution, that would be another movie. We were definitely in McCarthyland, which is no bad place to be. But I'm sure you weren't alone in wishing there we'd been more Coen Country, a place with less "Poetry" and a bigger finishes.
  
  PS: about your spoiler, the truck was bouncing up and down, it was dark and the target was zig zagging. Didn't ruin it for me. And the dog attack was an editing marvel.

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