Well, I can certainly see why somebody would really be put off by the movie. It has too much violence for my taste. The violence is gratuitous; I just did not feel we needed to see that many people get killed, shot, etc. even if it was part of the story. You can have characters get knocked off without seeing their brains shooting across the screen every time [ironically, there were so many people getting killed sometimes we didn't see it and there was still too much of it!] And what I mean it is just too much to watch for what's good for the soul. Yep, I mean children should not watch this movie, but neither should teenagers, and for that matter, neither should somebody my age or any age. It's just not good for anybody to start to ingest that much nastiness.
I watched it today by myself when I had a chance so Sue wouldn't have to leave the room. I'd say Sue would hate this movie, but then again she liked and recommended Pulp Fiction , a movie I disliked because of the gratuitous violence and the fact it was just generally a sordid story I didn't want attached to my soul either. It was so bad I charge it was guilty of the trivialization of evil, as it sort of had a silly element as well. I had similar problems, then, with No Country for Old Men.
But I liked the movie, overall! Perhaps on the wrong day I would have hated it. As it was, it struck me that the suspense of "what is going to happen next" was just masterful, this was on-the-edge-of-your-seat stuff indeed. And the movie [unlike Pulp F.] had an undeniable pertinence for today, now that we are seeing the current violence about drugs in Mexico and the border area. I also have the criticism that it had an element of the supernatural villain that bugs me a little; the evil guy that can't get caught, always has a leg up on everybody, etc. They actually referred to the guy as a ghost. On the other hand, John Wayne syndrome was banished from the movie entirely; the good guys were not superhuman, and when one of them seemed to be taking on the John Wayne role he was sooner or later shown to be quite fallible. I have gotten to like this in a movie. I didn't like the ending, which was handled in such a way as if to suggest they had just run out of money and had to quit filming, so that was the end! This left the status of several characters in the lurch. The Coen brothers can be irritating in a number of ways, I almost never forgave them for lying by claiming at the beginning of Fargo that it was a "true story." I refused to watch any more of their movies for years and probably it took O Brother Where Art Thou for them to redeem themselves with me. On this day at least, though, I can say I liked the movie. Overall.
PS: here was Marsha's comment on the movie from over a year ago:
No Country for Old Men - Let me emphasize that we hated, yes hated, this movie. It was violent and pointless. Tommy Lee Jones was in it and I am starting to sense a pattern here. The story was inconclusive and frankly not all that compelling. Call me crazy but I like a good story. There was nothing here worth caring about.
She gave it a "D". Link.
PSS: If you want to see a movie that rejects the John Wayne thing, see Ulee's Gold (1997)
3 comments:
I don't think you can blame the Coen brothers for the ending -- the movie is based on a book by Cormac McCarthy, who has a habit of not ending things. He also tends to be pretty bleak and violent in his writing.
I agreed with you about the movie though; in spite of all the violence, I actually liked it.
I liked Pulp Fiction but didn't think it was the greatest movie of all time. In fact, I thought it was a kind of send-up of a certain trend of our culture at that time. Pulp Fiction is just a movie that was enjoyable to watch, albeit I closed my eyes during a couple scenes. Some of the acting was pretty good, too. With No Country for Old Men I knew from the getgo it was going to be all violence all the time.
I agree with Louise, Cormac McCarthy writes interesting books that amble off into the sunset with no "fini" to sign off.
If you removed all of the violence, the movie would be about 20 minutes long. And as for suspense ... I saw none. I knew that pretty much everyone was going to die since everyone was getting shot. On the issue of drugs, the movie Traffic did a far far better job of analyzing the entire hypocrisy of the drug wars.
Pulp Fiction and its predecessor Reservoir Dogs were both ridiculously violent. But at least the characters were interesting and complex. He writes great dialog. How can you deny the brilliance of Samuel L. in that terrific monolog about death?
Perhaps I would not like Cormac McCarthy novels because did not think the characters were complex. I thought they were pretty boring and unbelievable. I thought the dialog in No Country was incomprehensible or just evoked a big "who cares."
That's my two cents.
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