• Home
• About

No Country For Old Men

It was good, but I can’t say it was great and I am surprised by the Oscar and other high acclaim. Clearly the Best Picture was for the Coen brothers’ collective work till now. I mean, Fargo was ten times better.

• Character, Structure/Plot

For the Tommy Lee theme to hit home, he needed to be a bigger part of the story. As is, he didn’t do anything significant! Think about all his scenes and think about the other characters and events and you’ll realize the story would’ve been practically the same without him. That’s because he merely verbalized the theme instead of it being dramatized through action.

Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) was the protagonist for most of the movie. To have him die off-screen in an abrupt, surprising way was a let-down, to put it mildly.

• Dialogue

Around 15 times characters said “What?” in response to something said to them, or they repeated the comment in question form. That technique works to emphasize key things, but no more than three times in a movie.

• Little thing

As for the bad guy (Javier Bardem), I eventually hated the fact that he walked everywhere with a massive gun or that tank and no one ever saw him or reported him. (The movie started with him under arrest, but I don’t feel that excused everything after.) I understand the mystique and power of his character, but I don’t believe all the rules of reality need to be thrown out the window in order to create that image.

Subscribe to the RSS feed and follow the conversation.