No Movie For Old Elfdart

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2008-09-14 11:29am

I make it a point to avoid movies that cause critics and Academy voters to fap themselves into a lather, since they almost always suck. In a fit of boredom last night, I watched No Country For Old Men, the Snob Hit of 2007.

It's a typical Coen Brothers movie with double-dealing, sleazy and demented characters, and silence punctuated by absurd violence. Except this movie (unlike the Coens' other films) is tedious and stupid.

The main villain is a joke. Mr. Kidd and Mister Wint from Diamonds Are Forever are more convincing as heavies, have less pretentious dialogue and are better acted. In fact, the same could be said for most Bond heavies, none of whom were awarded Snob Hit Oscars.

The sheriff is a moron who knows someone is out to kill the Scottish girl with the bad Texas accent (someone watched too many episodes of Dallas, I see) but doesn't think of telling the police so they can keep an eye on her mother's place, nor does he think of locking her up for her own good. He's not the only moron, though.

The Josh Brolin character is also an idiot. He could have taken his wife and left the state (or the country) and the Most Ridiculous Henchman In Movie History would have had almost zero chance of finding them.

The movie is seven or eight kinds of stupid, and the fact that critics gushed over it (and the people who made it) proves that once you get a reputation for getting out of bed early you can sleep til noon for the rest of your life. With the undeserved praise this movie has gotten, the Coens will never have to worry about setting their alarm clocks again.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-14 11:37am

Completely agreed. I couldn't believe this film won the Best Picture award. For that matter, I couldn't believe the entire Nominee list last year. You had shit films like this, and Atonement, while an excellent film like 3:10 to Yuma was snubbed.

The film is so stupid on many levels, starting right from the beginning when Lewellyn decides to go back to the shootout scene in the desert to give water to a man he saw dying of a gut wound twelve hours earlier. What the fuck? Even Rebecca, who is normally very forgiving of irrational character decisions in movies, was shaking her head at that one. And the characters are all completely two-dimensional.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2008-09-14 11:50am

The movie is way too contrived. In fact, if the fellow in this question was even a bit smarter, the whole rationale for the movie wouldn't have existed.

And yeah, why the fuck go back and bring back the water? He knew the area wasn't going to be safe, why do it? And then instantly giving the killer a lead on his whereabouts.

Not to mention, the stereotypical cold blooded killer...

I wonder if many of the critics are "small town Americans"...

JLTucker · Post by **JLTucker** » 2008-09-14 11:54am

Remember, critics love fucking artsy films. You know those types of films: clever dialogue, clever camera angles, etc. Most of those completely suck ass.

Darth Hoth · Post by **Darth Hoth** » 2008-09-14 12:04pm

Darth Wong wrote:The film is so stupid on many levels, starting right from the beginning when Lewellyn decides to go back to the shootout scene in the desert to give water to a man he saw dying of a gut wound twelve hours earlier. What the fuck? Even Rebecca, who is normally very forgiving of irrational character decisions in movies, was shaking her head at that one. And the characters are all completely two-dimensional.

I always thought him being retarded was honestly supposed to be part of the film. Or more accurately, autistic: good at certain things, but overall less than fully functioning. For example, that thing he built to pull the bag out of the ventilation duct. Had he never heard of, say, boathooks?

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2008-09-14 12:15pm

In the last 20 years there have been THREE Best Picture winners that I wouldn't mind seeing again: Silence of the Lambs, Gladiator and Unforgiven. The only other film I enjoyed was The English Patient, but that wasn't the movie so much as the fact that my date thought my eyes were tearing up for the same reason hers were (I had allergies; she was a chick watching a sappy chick-flick), and after the movie she dragged me over to her place and proceeded to fuck my brains out on the couch.

Even a good, hard shag wouldn't have saved No Country For Old Men.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2008-09-14 12:16pm

Well I really liked it, particularly that I couldn't predict the plot (which still kind of made sense) that it didn't have a happy ending and generally found it a really tense and enjoyable film. I neither knew nor cared that it won an oscar.

As for critics being "small town Americans" so far as I can tell they generally tend to be pretty liberal and cosmopolitan, do "small town americans" like films with subtitles?

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2008-09-14 12:17pm

Darth Hoth wrote:I always thought him being retarded was honestly supposed to be part of the film. Or more accurately, autistic: good at certain things, but overall less than fully functioning. For example, that thing he built to pull the bag out of the ventilation duct. Had he never heard of, say, boathooks?

I feel the same way about critics. Sure, they can function well enough to type but Jesus Tittyfucking Christ they are stupid!

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2008-09-14 12:19pm

Plekhanov wrote:Well I really liked it, particularly that I couldn't predict the plot (which still kind of made sense) that it didn't have a happy ending and generally found it a really tense and enjoyable film. I neither knew nor cared that it won an oscar.

As for critics being "small town Americans" so far as I can tell they generally tend to be pretty liberal and cosmopolitan, do "small town americans" like films with subtitles?

If a plot turn is clever, I usually like it. If the plot turns because someone is so unbelievably stupid (and it's not played for laughs) I don't.

Plekhanov · Post by **Plekhanov** » 2008-09-14 12:25pm

Elfdart wrote:If a plot turn is clever, I usually like it. If the plot turns because someone is so unbelievably stupid (and it's not played for laughs) I don't.

He was generally pretty dumb, I don't particularly mind dumb characters doing stupid things (particularly if it's out of some kind of notion of 'honour'), It wasn't as if he was supposed to be some kind of highly capable person who kept on acting in nonsensical ways as happens in so many films with both the protagonists and bad guys.

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2008-09-14 12:35pm

He's smart enough to figure the owners of the money are going to come looking for him and his wife. So what does he do? He sends her off to her mother's house by herself and dicks around in town. This is the level of stupidity I'd expect from a bad teen slasher movie from the late 70s/early 80s:

"There's a killer on the loose! Let's split up!"

Hell, at least a teen slasher movie tries to make up for its idiocy by having the female victim do a shower scene before she buys it. And the killer doesn't spew a bunch of pretentious, bullshit dialogue. He just wears a hockey faceguard or a William Shatner mask and goes about his business of stalking and killing.

Darth Hoth · Post by **Darth Hoth** » 2008-09-14 12:36pm

Elfdart wrote:
Darth Hoth wrote:I always thought him being retarded was honestly supposed to be part of the film. Or more accurately, autistic: good at certain things, but overall less than fully functioning. For example, that thing he built to pull the bag out of the ventilation duct. Had he never heard of, say, boathooks?
I feel the same way about critics. Sure, they can function well enough to type but Jesus Tittyfucking Christ they are stupid!

I shall not argue against that; as a general rule when I read film reviews in the dailies, I tend to reverse the scores given. More often than not, that produces a more accurate assessment.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2008-09-14 02:04pm

Gonna go ahead and run against the grain here: I thought No Country was a fine movie about limited people acting according to their natures/ethics.

The main character does stupid things that end up getting him killed? Well, I guess he's remarkably similar to a lot of normal people! Why should he know more than he does? Look at the next guy you see driving across Texas in an old pickup: how do you think he'd do?

In DnD terms, he was a level 1 neutral-good commoner who stumbles into a level 4 evil campaign that's in the middle of collapsing into PvP. He didn't do so bad.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2008-09-14 02:06pm

I thought that movie was awful after the first twenty minutes, which is as long as the story should have been, and I never did watch the whole thing despite my friends fawning over it for no apparent reason. The guy should have taken his wife and the money and left the state as soon as he found it, and any reason person would have done just that.

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2008-09-14 02:09pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:I thought that movie was awful after the first twenty minutes, which is as long as the story should have been, and I never did watch the whole thing despite my friends fawning over it for no apparent reason. The guy should have taken his wife and the money and left the state as soon as he found it, and any reason person would have done just that.

So, EXACTLY how much money would it take for you to GTFO of Dodge and never communicate with anyone you know again?

Block · Post by **Block** » 2008-09-14 02:14pm

Sriad wrote:Gonna go ahead and run against the grain here: I thought No Country was a fine movie about limited people acting according to their natures/ethics.

The main character does stupid things that end up getting him killed? Well, I guess he's remarkably similar to a lot of normal people! Why should he know more than he does? Look at the next guy you see driving across Texas in an old pickup: how do you think he'd do?

In DnD terms, he was a level 1 neutral-good commoner who stumbles into a level 4 evil campaign that's in the middle of collapsing into PvP. He didn't do so bad.

Except that even a modern day fool knows about airports. So you buy a ticket out of state to the east coast, with the ton of money you found, and you win.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2008-09-14 02:14pm

Sriad wrote:
So, EXACTLY how much money would it take for you to GTFO of Dodge and never communicate with anyone you know again?

Why the hell would you never communicate with anyone you know? Some moronic hit man is not going to be tapping dozens of phone lines and monitoring every last one all the tie. I don’t even remember who much money was involved because I didn’t care about the movie one bit, but if it was enough to be worth stealing from a field of dead bodies it damn well ought to be enough to go live in a different trailer park. I don’t know about you but I wouldn't get caught up in that kind of shit for some trivial amount like say ten grand.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-14 02:18pm

Sriad wrote:The main character does stupid things that end up getting him killed? Well, I guess he's remarkably similar to a lot of normal people!

Bullshit. No normal person, after having come close to such a scene of ruthless mass violence and miraculously getting away with millions of dollars (or whatever the amount was; it was a considerable sum), would come back 12 hours later. You can't excuse any and all character idiocy by saying that people are dumb; there are degrees of dumb.

Sriad wrote:So, EXACTLY how much money would it take for you to GTFO of Dodge and never communicate with anyone you know again?

The bad guys had no idea who he was, until he stupidly went back to the scene of the crime 12 hours later and they found his truck. There is no need to cut ties with everyone you know, because the bad guys won't be watching any of them. Just move across country and tell everyone you just felt like a change of scenery.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-14 02:33pm

I thought the whole point was to see how Moss' stupid compassion and curiosity got him into a whole heap of trouble he didn't need. That's how I saw it. You can't rationalise it any other way than a guy finding a once in a lifetime find, then fucking his whole life over just as quickly.

I didn't have a problem with Chigurh. I found his obsessive compulsive psychopath to be the most interesting part of the film, and I really just wanted him to cause as much carnage as possible before getting Moss and ending the whole escapade the one way he didn't want it to go.

Sidewinder · Post by **Sidewinder** » 2008-09-14 02:58pm

My sister borrowed a copy of the DVD from one of her friends. Reading this, I'm glad I didn't watch it with her.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I thought the whole point was to see how Moss' stupid compassion and curiosity got him into a whole heap of trouble he didn't need. That's how I saw it.

If giving water to a guy dying of a gut wound is an act of compassion, then we can say putting a bullet in the wounded man's head is also one, as both acts have the same result: the man will DIE. And even if we forgive this Lewellyn character's lack of first aid techniques and medical knowledge, why did he wait 12 FUCKING HOURS before trying to help the wounded man?

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2008-09-14 03:00pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Sriad wrote:The main character does stupid things that end up getting him killed? Well, I guess he's remarkably similar to a lot of normal people!
Bullshit. No normal person, after having come close to such a scene of ruthless mass violence and miraculously getting away with millions of dollars (or whatever the amount was; it was a considerable sum), would come back 12 hours later. You can't excuse any and all character idiocy by saying that people are dumb; there are degrees of dumb.

My take is that Moss doesn't want to feel like an immoral thief, and he went back to assuage his outraged morals before he did a runner. In hindsight, a terrible idea and even on the spot not very smart, but I figure every movie gets one free premise to get the plot fired up: a self-styled cowboy being driven by his conscience to give a dying man water IMHO isn't going to break the suspension-of-disbelief bank.

If "shouldn't have gone back PERIOD" is a seed of resentment you'll carry through the rest of the movie, there isn't much else I can write to change your opinion.

Block wrote:Except that even a modern day fool knows about airports. So you buy a ticket out of state to the east coast, with the ton of money you found, and you win.

If he'd done that right away probably, but by the time he had figured out just what kind of shit he was in, (why not faster? he was busy not getting over what a dick he'd been to deny a dying man a drink of water.), the bad guys had his (liscence) number, and the airport is an obvious escape vector. I don't recall just how stringent ID requirements on flight in the early 80s were, but he probably would have needed to take time to get fake IDs to avoid leaving a hot trail.

Also, he really didn't want to admit to his wife just how fucked they were. "We're flying out of the state, and no you can't tell your mother where you're going" was as likely to get the police called as it was to grease the wheels.

Sea Skimmer wrote:
Sriad wrote: So, EXACTLY how much money would it take for you to GTFO of Dodge and never communicate with anyone you know again?
Why the hell would you never communicate with anyone you know? Some moronic hit man is not going to be tapping dozens of phone lines and monitoring every last one all the tie. I don’t even remember who much money was involved because I didn’t care about the movie one bit, but if it was enough to be worth stealing from a field of dead bodies it damn well ought to be enough to go live in a different trailer park. I don’t know about you but I wouldn't get caught up in that kind of shit for some trivial amount like say ten grand.

$2 million, the hit man was the agent (one of several) of a significant drug syndicate willing to put a lot of resources to work to punish someone who stole from them, and your total indifference the movie other than to me-too a minimally informed bad opinion suggest your perspective on the movie is a swamp I'm not interested in getting TOO deeply lost in. In that order.

Maybe you think I'm ascribing too much capability to Team Killers, but if so you're putting yourselves in a logistically dubious position of advocating that Moss should be running for his life, but shouldn't be scared or anything.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-14 03:00pm

Never mind how long he waited; if he was feeling compassion for the dying men, why didn't he use a pay-phone and anonymously report the crime to the authorities? Then you'd have actual medical professionals showing up. It's not as if they won't find the place sooner or later anyway.

A real person will thank his lucky stars that he got away from that cluster-fuck alive and with all that money, rather than tempting fate a second time. How could he even know that more bandits wouldn't show up before he got away from there the first time?

Sriad · Post by **Sriad** » 2008-09-14 03:11pm

Darth Wong wrote:The bad guys had no idea who he was, until he stupidly went back to the scene of the crime 12 hours later and they found his truck. There is no need to cut ties with everyone you know, because the bad guys won't be watching any of them. Just move across country and tell everyone you just felt like a change of scenery.

Except that puts him in one of two positions:

1) Pack up immediately, leaving everything he owns behind; make any provisions for disposal of his belongings remotely. This is a great big red flag that signals to anyone who may be looking in the vicinity "Hey! I just found a huge sack of money!!" The average trailer-homer doesn't have the kind of disposable income to arbitrarily create a new life because he "feels like it."

2) Take the time for a realistic move, and get tracked down via the radio transmitter packed in with the money. In hindsight we can add "If you find an sack of money, repack it and keep an eye out for radio transmitters" to the long list of things for enlightened protagonists to do, but it's not an reasonable intuitive leap in 1980.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-09-14 03:11pm

Sidewinder wrote: If giving water to a guy dying of a gut wound is an act of compassion, then we can say putting a bullet in the wounded man's head is also one, as both acts have the same result: the man will DIE. And even if we forgive this Lewellyn character's lack of first aid techniques and medical knowledge, why did he wait 12 FUCKING HOURS before trying to help the wounded man?

Because he was a fool. From what I gathered, he had that guy niggling in the back of his mind for those hours, before he finally went back and did the dumbest thing he could do. Honestly, leaving his wife to face the music was the second worst thing.

I wouldn't rule out such stupidity in real life. I've never overestimated it before, and it really should have led to Moss being aced rather than everyone he came across. Which is the sad irony in this tale, because the guy who really deserved to be fucked over got off free.

However, how he missed the tracking device is a mystery to me. He obviously didn't miss it, though, because it wasn't hidden, IIRC. Therefore, that's a bigger plot point than him going back with a half-hearted saviour attempt for the half-dead drug runner.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-14 06:19pm

Sriad wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:The bad guys had no idea who he was, until he stupidly went back to the scene of the crime 12 hours later and they found his truck. There is no need to cut ties with everyone you know, because the bad guys won't be watching any of them. Just move across country and tell everyone you just felt like a change of scenery.
Except that puts him in one of two positions:

1) Pack up immediately, leaving everything he owns behind; make any provisions for disposal of his belongings remotely. This is a great big red flag that signals to anyone who may be looking in the vicinity "Hey! I just found a huge sack of money!!" The average trailer-homer doesn't have the kind of disposable income to arbitrarily create a new life because he "feels like it."

2) Take the time for a realistic move, and get tracked down via the radio transmitter packed in with the money. In hindsight we can add "If you find an sack of money, repack it and keep an eye out for radio transmitters" to the long list of things for enlightened protagonists to do, but it's not an reasonable intuitive leap in 1980.

What a load of horseshit. People in trailer parks move more readily than people with real homes, and it creates less of a stir when they do so. What the fuck makes you think some guy living in a shithole trailer park has to spend a lot of time doing logistics planning for a real move? Or that it would create a big stir when he does? All he has to say is "I'm sick of this dump, I'm gonna go east."

And the idea that he would have gotten inevitably tracked down is bullshit too; the transmitter doesn't have a very long range, and a random search would take forever. And who the hell wouldn't move the money out of the case and into a nondescript duffel bag right away? Even if he doesn't know about the transmitter, anyone with half a brain would say to himself: "Shit, I don't want someone seeing this case and recognizing it".

Once more: the story relies upon epic idiocy. Your attempts to defend that idiocy as being logical decision-making in context are nothing more than fanboyism. The real problem is that you watched the film, you were too uncritical to pick up on how fucking stupid he was, and when other people pointed out what an incredible imbecile he was, you felt compelled to defend him because you didn't pick up on it yourself.