No Country For Old Men

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS A SPOILER

I usually write reviews to just provide enough information to give the reader a taste for the movie without revealing how it ends. However, for this movie, I must change my style.

What do you call a movie that ends without any conflict resolution? No Country For Old Men. What do you call a movie that kills off the protagonist a half an hour before the movie ends? No Country For Old Men. What movie leaves you thinking, "What the hell just happened?" No Country For Old Men.

I must admit that the first hour and 45 minutes of the movie had me on the edge of my seat. The premise of the movie is that Josh Brolin finds a field of cars and dead bodies. He had come across the results of a drug deal gone bad. He finds a bag with $1.5 million in it and decides to keep it. However, he soon learns that he is being chased and begins to run.

What we learn is that he is being pursued by Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a Hispanic hit-man hired by the Mexican mafia to retrieve the money. This guy is an absolute psychopath and deserves the award for best supporting actor. Also chasing Brolin is Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), a hit man and apparent former collegue of Chigurh. Finally, Sherrif Tommy Lee Jones, an older soon-to-be retiring police officer with a great wit, is searching for both. This trail of dead bodies across the state gave him an interest in the case.

Without giving away the good part, we culminate in El Paso, Texas. Brolin is trying to get the money to his wife so that she can escape. He's been running from Chigurh and think's he may have escaped him. What he is not ware of is that the Mexican mafia has not lost him. The next thing you know almost everyone is dead. Tommy Lee Jones returns to the crime scene later that evening and the viewer knows that Chigurh is there, however he is hiding and there is no interaction between the two and Jones leaves.

We then go to Chigurh who's sitting in a chair in the bedroom of Brolin's mother-in-law's house and Brolin's wife returns from the funeral. After a short maniacal conversation, we see him leave the house wiping off his shoes. We assume he killed her.

Then, here's where the movie takes a big poop on your desk and the movie doesn't feel bad about it. The movie's last scene shows Tommy Lee Jones talking to his wife. Apparently he retired. He's talking about two dreams he had about his father. After the second dream he woke up. And the movie ends.

What the hell???? I had to check the DVD player. I thought it accidentally skipped to the end. What did I miss? Did I fall asleep for 30 minutes? How can a movie end like this. I need conclusions. No loose ends. Now my mental imagination thinks this Chigurh dude is still out there and, quite honestly, I'm scared. What if he knows that I hated the ending of the movie? Is he going to come looking for me?

How do I rate this movie? I don't know. How about this - the first hour and 45 minutes of the movie deserves a solid 5 stars. The tension, the drama, the action - it's all worth it. The final 15 minutes - 2 stars. Were the Coen brothers expressing their artistic side? The self-recognizing Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to think so. They gave this big piece of poo the award for best movie. Boo!!!!

If you like movies with hugely dissappointing endings, then this movie is for you. If you like logical endings, skip it. You'll be so irritated you won't be able to sleep and you'll have to eat a bag of Doritoes and watch Letterman until you can calm down. (At least that's why I had to do!)