No Country For Old Men

I went to see this I wouldn't say eagerly last Friday at the Watershed and I have to say I found it an enjoyable film on the whole but nothing spectacular. There was a schism in our group between those that found the whole thing perfectly interesting and enjoyable and those who found the last twenty minutes so disjointed and irritating that they came away hating the whole thing.

<SPOILER ALERT>

For me whilst the last section of the film did seem somewhat choppy, basically from the point where the Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is killed, but I felt this wasn't incongruous and the pace of the film did need to change at that point. One thing I did feel was that it was interesting to lose the (a) main character like that in mid flow, I certainly didn't expect it, but it did make me feel a stronger connection with his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald), only to have her killed off at the end of the film, which was irritating.

</SPOILER ALERT>

And flirting with irritating even when in the cause of exploring themes of chance and self-determination is a dangerous thing for a film to do. I found the existential musings in the film quite agreeable on the whole, enough to overcome the irritations but others didn't.

I did like Tommy Lee Jones' performance, it is what he does best after all, but I particularly liked him as the lawman without a purpose other than to act as a kind-of narrative counterpoint to what's going on. A literary device to add depth to the story he only exists in the film to comment on what's going on in the broader sense and ends up more or less helplessly following the events with a kind of resignation that everything will turn out badly regardless of what he does. At one point he even has to ask a neighbour to call the police because he has no jurisdiction. But his voice is important and helps the film a great deal.

So on the whole I thought it was a decent film, nicely written, nicely filmed with good performances all round. Worth watching a second time to get into the subtleties a bit more. And hopefully not get lulled into a dream by TLJ's final monologue like I did the first time!