Hat tip to GoJoe for this Key Quote from David Denby's New Yorker re-review of No Country for Old Men:
"The spooky-chic way the Coens use Bardem has excited audiences with a tingling sense of the uncanny. But, in the end, the movie's despair is unearned; it's far too dependent on an arbitrarily manipulated plot and some very old-fashioned junk mechanics. No Country is the Coens' most accomplished achievement in craft, with many stunning sequences, but there are absences in it that hollow out the movie¹s attempt at greatness. If you consider how little the sheriff bestirs himself, his philosophical resignation, however beautifully spoken by Tommy Lee Jones, feels self-pitying, even fake. And the Coens, however faithful to the book, cannot be forgiven for disposing of Llewelyn so casually. After watching this foolhardy but physically gifted and decent guy escape so many traps, we have a great deal invested in him emotionally, and yet he¹s eliminated, off-camera, by some unknown Mexicans. He doesn¹t get the dignity of a death scene. The Coens have suppressed their natural jauntiness. They have become orderly, disciplined masters of chaos, but one still has the feeling that, out there on the road from nowhere to nowhere, they are rooting for it rather than against it."
We couldn't have said it half as well
.Denby's last point is perhaps the crucial one, embracing many of the film's defenders as well as its makers.
Posts
