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The truth about No Country For Old Men By Wescoat, (DT) January 23, 2008 1:32 PM PT

It's common knowledge now that No Country For Old Men is already being hailed as a modern classic, not to mention leading the Oscar nomination pack with 8 (well, tied with There Will Be Blood but who's counting anyway?), including Best Picture and Best Director/s for Ethan and Joel Coen. But here's the hard truth about that film: When all is said and done and the Coen Brothers are dead and gone and being studied in film classes or holograms or whatever learning venues exist in the future, Country will be largely forgotten . "Oh it's a beautiful film technically," the instructor or alien or holographic image will transmit into your grandchild's learning chip, "but its story and characters and thematic explorations and other elements that make a movie great don't add up to a hill of beans." Beneath its layers of stunning cinematography, awe-inspiring sound design and great performances, Country is a mediocre film based on a mediocre novel by Cormack McCarthy. It introduces an intriguing premise (man finds drug bust gone wrong, man takes money from drug bust), a creepy-as-hell villain (Javier Bardem, rightly nominated for Best Supporting Actor), and a great cast of side characters, then proceeds to take them all on a journey to... nowhere. The elements taken individually are amazing to behold; together they add up to nothing much. Think I'm wrong? I challenge you to watch the film again and see if it gets better on repeat viewings (as all the Coen Bros' great films do, and even some of the lesser ones like Intolerable Cruelty). I predict you will find that Bardem's character, despite being creepy as hell, is a depth-less cartoon as opposed to a fully realized person. In Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss you will see a man embroiled over his head in a violent situation that causes neither change nor reflection in him. And in Woody Harrelson's briefly seen bounty hunter role you will observe the film-makers' sneakily desperate attempt to pump drama into an inherently empty story by squeezing in a meaningless character in the third act. Only Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff character exudes pathos or lasting value, but his story is muddled under the clutter of the other story lines. Some people who have disagreed with my bitching about this film (which includes pretty much everyone) have argued that it's ultimately about Tommy Lee's character and that's why the other characters' stories wind up feeling irrelevant, and also why (SPOILER ALERT) Llewelyn's death scene at the motel is not so much handled as completely ignored. But, while I agree Tommy Lee's thread is the most meaningful of the lot, its prominence is lost under all the time spent developing the other threads, which all end up going nowhere. If the Coens truly meant to make Tommy Lee the focal point, they played a dirty trick, because the first 3/4 of the film has us rooting and rooting hard for Llewelyn. When his death arrives in such an anticlimactic, unsatisfactory manner, I felt cheated, and was not appeased by the alleged, last-second "switch" over to Tommy Lee as Guy to Root For. But the main reason I knew No Country was not a classic (and I saw it on opening day, so there was no hype putting pressure on me to not like it) was because, unlike the Coen Bros movies I love (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple), it was easily and immediately accessible. It was entertaining and suspenseful and simple to follow... until it wasn't entertaining anymore. Classic Coens, however, are NOT accessible upon first viewing, or if they are, it is only on a surface level. The first time I watched them I felt that I basically got what was going on but somehow didn't enjoy them as much as I could have. This was because I didn't understand them fully because they were teaching me a NEW KIND of movie; they were doing something I hadn't seen before. Upon subsequent viewings, my mind began to understand, to learn what they were doing, and I came to love them on an impossibly deep level because they helped me grow as a movie watcher and as a person?they forever enriched me. No Country does not and did not have that effect. It is a very well-done thriller with awe-inspiring production and a chilling pace that are unique enough to make it stand out. It is nothing more beyond that, and near the end, when it tries to be something it isn't (a classic Coen brothers film), it loses focus and becomes downright mediocre. It will not stand the test of time, it will barely be remembered. The entire notion of Best Picture is a joke and a blatant ploy to increase ticket sales. I don't care what wins Best Picture; it doesn't matter. I'm sure plenty of people out there think Transformers should win Best Picture?what makes their opinion wrong? No, what rubs me the wrong way about the No Country hype is how people whose opinion I know and respect are ranking it among the Coen Bros' finest films. It's an imposter. Sure, it may be a better movie experience than Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (what isn't really?), but within the world the Coen Brothers' have created, it's a dying star, and I'm tired of hearing about it. Thanks for reading this far. I hope you don't hate me now.