It pains me to say so, but I found the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men a disappointment. Although I haven't read the book, I understand that this is a very faithful adaptation, so I suspect I would find both the novel and the film unsatisfactory for the same reasons.
I won't go into detail about this, for fear of revealing too much of the plot, but I mainly took exception to: the tedious moralising (voiced by by the lawman narrator) about how society has become unacceptably violent, in a film/book that makes the depiction of said violence the main souce of entertainment; the narrative incoherence in the last 15 minutes or so; the abrupt and arbitrary ending.
I won't go into detail about this, for fear of revealing too much of the plot, but I mainly took exception to: the tedious moralising (voiced by by the lawman narrator) about how society has become unacceptably violent, in a film/book that makes the depiction of said violence the main souce of entertainment; the narrative incoherence in the last 15 minutes or so; the abrupt and arbitrary ending.
In purely filmmaking terms it is hard to find fault with No Country for Old Men. Cinematography, acting and direction are all superb, but the experience of watching it is ultimately depressing, and not because of the subject-matter. Could it be that the Coens really have lost their way, and have resorted to adapting and remaking other peoples' work rather than crafting their own original stories for the screen? I really hope not, as I would far rather spend time in the company of Frances McDormand's chief of police in Fargo or Sam Elliot's folksy narrator in The Big Lebowski, than Tommy Lee Jones' po-faced counterpart in No Country for Old Men.
Nora Ephron, writing in the New Yorker, summed up many of my own feelings about the film, and made me laugh out loud in the process. Read her piece here.
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