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Downtown 
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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 Posted - 04/16/2008 : 02:43:17
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quote:
Firstly the two protagonists whose gripping cat and mouse game involves us so intensely for the majority of the running time never actually meet.
But it didn't "involve me intensely" because it required so many idiot plot elements. It was a cat and mouse game only because the mouse is the world's biggest jackass. I WANTED him to die, and I was glad when he finally did. His stupid wife, too.
It was a movie where I felt no sympathy - or even empathy - for ANY of the characters. It might have been saved for me if I could have at least cared about Bell...but his character was presented in such a way as to purposely avoid that. |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 04/16/2008 : 03:13:03
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| I'd like to respond, but I don't understand what you mean when you say Bell was stupid. What exactly do you mean? |
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damalc 
"last watched: Sausage Party"
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Posted - 04/16/2008 : 03:24:40
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SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
i thought Bell was stupid to go back to the scene to take the survivor water but other than that was pretty resourceful.
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Edited by - damalc on 04/16/2008 03:26:35 |
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Downtown
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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Posted - 04/16/2008 : 03:27:46
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| Oh I thought we were talking about Moss and Chigurd. It never even occurred to me that the engaging cat and mouse game might involve Bell. |
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MisterBadIdea
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 04/16/2008 : 07:00:56
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D'oh. I actually meant Moss, yes.
But, in any case, the only thing I can think of he did that wasn't smart is that he went back to give the survivor water, a move he clearly recognized as dangerous but also clearly weighed heavy on his conscience. Nearly everything he did after that was smooth as butter.
The film is not really about Chigurh as it is about Chigurh's worldview, and how he is clearly correct about the idea that the world is without meaning, order or logic. By taking the money, Moss is trying to add the meaning to his world that his wife, the Vietnam War, and the rest of his shit-ass life in Nowhere, TX has failed to. Chigurh deals with it by choosing to be an avatar of chaos, but of course, he's as subject to the whims of fate as anyone else in the movie.
To be honest, that's a little academic for my tastes, though the Coens would hardly be able to change anything and still have the movie hold up thematically. I'd put NCFOM on my top ten list of the year but it'd be near the bottom, I certainly don't like it as much as There Will Be Blood, Spider-Man 3, last week's episode of "The Office," etc. But I do think it's a classic. Part of the reason so many felt gypped about the end is that, though this movie is not a thriller, it could easily be mistaken for one for much of its screen time.
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I WANTED him to die, and I was glad when he finally did. His stupid wife, too.
I don't get this sentiment at all. Honestly, it scares me a little. |
Edited by - MisterBadIdea on 04/16/2008 07:23:07 |
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Downtown
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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Posted - 04/16/2008 : 15:34:13
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Okay, let's see:
He was stupid for sticking his nose into some serious trouble that didn't concern him.
He was stupid for keeping the money in the same bag instead of ditching the bag. He might not have been expected to know there was a tracking device but at the very least he should have put the money in something that nobody would recognize. Jeez even I would know better than to carry $2,000,000 of dirty money in the same bag I found it in.
He was stupid for going back.
He was stupid for walking so far away from his truck.
He was stupid for standing around like a fool with his mouth gaping open when he saw someone had come back and killed the last survivor, instead of just getting the bleep out of there because he might be next.
He was stupid for not immediately realizing he was in over his head and using the money to hide himself and his family instead just taking it on a road trip.
He was stupid for thinking his wife would be safe.
He was stupid for going across the border IF he was planning on coming back with the money, which he was.
He was stupid for thinking he could protect his wife from a maniac that promised him he would kill her.
He was stupid for not realizing his wife would lead his killers to him.
His wife was stupid for not realizing her mother would lead the killers to him (that's why I lost sympathy for her, too).
quote:
quote:
I WANTED him to die, and I was glad when he finally did. His stupid wife, too.
I don't get this sentiment at all. Honestly, it scares me a little.
He man, it's just a movie. But all of these mistakes I've listed are not with the benefit of hindsight. I was thinking all of these things as the events were unfolding before my eyes. He was just SO FREAKING STUPID, by the time I saw him in the hotel playing with the homing device in his hands and not TRYING TO GET RID OF IT, I'd finally had it and was ready to start rooting for Chigurh. |
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 04/16/2008 : 15:58:17
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... and you all keep trying to use logic on what is a film about choices. Those made in good faith. Those made with little or no information. Those made for some inexplicable reason in the face of a hazy future. Those made while your eye's off the ball. Blah-blah-blah. And, for Bell, who's in the throes of his biggest life choice of all - as described in his opening monologue - everything that follows reinforces his bafflement at the way life's rules seem to have transformed in front of his eyes, like some kind of shapeshifter, some kind of driven presence who won't play by the rules -- yes, like Chigurh.
It's an expressionistic film. A film about a vanishing time, vanishing values ...
And that's why it ends the way it does.
As I said in my original review, if you treat it like a formula thriller you are going to be disappointed, my friend.
Now step away from the hose - it could take your eye out!
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 04/19/2008 : 19:14:48
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Originally posted by demonic
Secondly much of the key action that we almost demand to see - the fate of Moss and his wife - are off screen incidents. They are purposefully downplayed and leave you disorientated and unsatisfied, much like Sheriff Bell. McCarthy and the Coens make it much more difficult for the audience; I think that`s pretty extraordinary.
Oh come on. All that's hardly Innovation Central. Sure, in a bland action film one would get a neat and balanced ending, but in any film aspiring to be at all arty it's verging on totally standard to deny the audience an instinctively satisfying conclusion. |
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No Country For Old Men
