Wonder what has happened to film makers in Hollywood the last decade or so. Many of them seem to have become prisoners of an all-pervasive style of film-making that seems to be the norm these days. One that is over-stylized, pretentious and self-indulgent.No Country for Old Men was a big disappointment! I loved one of Coen brothers earlier creation Fargo, so was curious to watch this movie. (Fargo had brilliant performers in William H. Macy and Frances McDormand; the latter winning a well-deserved academy award for her performance.) The movie has great cinematography - the desert-landscape captured beautifully - but that's about it.
The killer in No Country for Old Men roams around freely killing people at will - in motels, highways, practically everywhere usually blowing them with a bazooka-like gun and/or, what Wikipedia informs, is a captive bolt pistol (need to thank the Coen brothers for introducing the audience to this charming weapon of destruction!). No one sees him or reports him - he walks into a motel, guns down people and calmly walks out.
Another bounty hunter (Woody Harrelson) mysteriously tracks down the character played by Josh Brolin, but we are not told how. He also, on his own, zeroes in on the exact spot of the satchel containing money that the latter hurriedly throws near the U.S-Mexican border. How, we again do not know. The movie is full of such flaws and silly mistakes. The directors seem to have got so engrossed in the making a thriller where the main characters play a cat-and-mouse game, that they seem to have thrown common sense and logic out of the window.
Javier Bardem, has won an Oscar for best supporting actor for this performance which at least a hundred other actors in Hollywood could have sleep-walked through. He plays an unemotional, deep-voiced, malevolent killer with no special flair. And they denied Leonardo DiCaprio the same award for his wonderful performance in that wonderfully quirky movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape!
My idea of a good thriller is The Sleuth, a 1972 movie with Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine. Brilliant performances by both actors, with edge-of-the-seat excitement without the blood and gore and excellent screenplay.
I wish Hollywood would stop this crazy obsession with style and technique and revert to good, solid film-making where the story and screenplay take precedence.
