No Country For Old Men

A while back I watched No Country For Old Men. I figured with all the awards it got I should at least give it a shot. Add to that it was directed by the Coen bothers who have unlimited goodwill in my book after Raising Arizona. I'm having a really hard time describing what type of movie this is. Maybe a modern day Western, but it's really not that. I have no idea what genre this would fall under, but Western comes about as close as anything I suppose.

Maybe it was just me, but the plot for this one meandered a bit more than I'm used to from the Coens. I liked the movie. The actors do a phenomenal job. The camera work is spot on. Even the characters are interesting. The only thing bad about it was I felt like I was dropped in the middle of a story and the film ended while still in the middle. I will say that after the movie ended I was left with a feeling of "That's it"? It's really weird, because the movie is really suspenseful and masterfully executed. And while there are "chase" scenes they aren't the big Hollywood blow them up chase scenes, but rather the quiet and terrifying ones. Nothing comes across as being over the top during the movie, and because of that it has a palatable sense of reality to it. Sort of you believe this could be happening (probably due in large part to the lack or big explosions and over the top action scenes). Characters that get injured stay injured, unlike your big budget action films where the main character can get shot, beat up, electrocuted, shot again, in several car wrecks and then still run around at full speed and fight as if nothing had happened (you know, like Jack Bauer on 24). This, however, just feels real. And maybe that's what the movie is trying to say, that there are some disturbingly violent people out there and they're real. I don't know. Like I said, I didn't "get" a lot of the movie, but it was so well executed I still enjoyed the film a lot.