Western Movie Review of No Country for Old Men - Give It A Second Look

by Clay
(Austin, Texas, USA)

Is This Really Worth All The Hype?

My western movie review of No Country For Old Men is no doubt a little sour despite of all the applause this movie received. This is, of course, the hugely popular movie that came out a little less than a year ago. It won a number of awards and accolades (including four Oscars). Additionally, the flick did very well in the box office. It was directed by the Cohen brothers and based off of a book written by the enormously popular Cormac McCarthy. But how good was this movie really?

To begin with I found this movie to move much too slow. Although there were some very exciting scenes were Javier Bardem’s character (Anton Chigurh) is chasing down his victims, it just took too long to get to these action packed scenes. There were so many scenes that just seemed superfluous to the plot and structure of the film. Scenes where for instance, Tommy Lee Jones’ character (Sheriff Ed Tom Bell) is just sitting in his office or hotel room and basically doing nothing. When the scene ends I found myself asking, "Now what was the point of that"?

Next, seriously… what was the deal with the weapon of choice for Bardem’s character? I don’t even know exactly how to describe it. It’s this strange instrument that shoots a hole through you. I mean, whatever happened to a gun or knife? This just seems like an attempt to do something out of the ordinary, but when a movie is different just for the sake of being different… it’s not that impressive. There should have been some background as to why he uses this weapon and why it fits in well with the movie.

On to Josh Brolin’s character (Llewlyn Moss), the hunter who stumbles into a bad situation and ends up being hunted by Bardem’s character. It was really difficult to empathize with this character because he didn’t really talk much. I wanted to root for him to live, but due to the movie I didn’t even know much about him. There could have been a lot more done with this character, but instead we spent our time watching Tommy Lee Jones sit in his hotel room and do nothing. It was a long movie and yet I felt that important characters were not even developed!

Despite all of my aforementioned criticism I still thought it was a good movie. The acting was good, and it was certainly based on a good book. There are also a number of excellently filmed action scenes where Bardem’s character is annihilating everything in sight. So if you love well-filmed action it can be a pretty good flick at times. It’s just been so widely acclaimed and loved that I think that the movie could use a little criticism.

When we all dogmatically accept that it is a great movie just because of the awards and popularity that prevents fair and balanced judgment of a movie. So if you’ve seen this movie, maybe give it another try with a fresh perspective, and if you have yet to give this film a gander, take a look without prematurely buying into all the hype.