Read/Viewed: No Country For Old Men

Just got back from No Country For Old Men. Well, just got back, then took a long walk down the road to think about it, then answered all my wife's questions about plot holes and contrivances based on my book learning, then re-read some reviews, then thought about grinding my way towards the good songs in Guitar Hero III, then looked up the latter and learned there are none. Then I decided to post instead.

I'm going to break, as I often do, from our spoiler policy and split this into two parts. The non-spoiler review follows. The spoiler review follows that.

No Spoilers For Old Men

While I don't think I could stomach reading No Country For Old Men, the audiobook version read by Tom Stechschulte is pretty damn gripping. It's edge of the driver's seat listening, and thematically it's a prequel to the bleak world depicted in The Road. I don't know whether the movie succeeds on both of those levels or not, because a late development in the story may have caused someone in the audience to have a heart attack. The theater neglected to turn the lights on and shut off the film, so the audience was left to grapple with whether they were supposed to ignore the EMTs and watch the denouement, or sit in the dark for 10 minutes and wait to find out if someone had died. Afterwards, another moral dilemma: Is it wrong to complain that your movie-going experience was ruined when someone's life is on the line? I can't say for sure, but as long as you aren't the asshole who leaves the theater saying, "No Country For OLD MEN! Hahahaha!", you're probably in the clear. Yay, date night.

Old Men Who Like It In The Spoiler #18
Seriously! Spoilery spoilers below!
Yo! My gangsta flow! Yo! Yo-ho-ho.
Also...spoilers.

Maybe the book is too fresh in my mind, but even without knowing how the movie ended, I'm almost kinda pretty pissed off. The Coen brothers got the suspense parts right, but they botched the message. My wife's a smart woman, and she wouldn't be asking me, "Why did this happen?", "Why would this person do something stupid?", "How could this be possible?", etc., if the film hadn't skipped over or altered plot points from the source material. While I understand nervous laughter, and that the fragility of human existence is part of the point, we shouldn't be laughing when Chigurh is sitting naked on a toilet picking bullets out of his flesh. He's supposed to be a symbol of unknowable, unstoppable violence spreading in modern times, damn it!

Succintly put, I resent them for turning Cormac McCarthy's thesis on escalating, inevitable chaos into Fargo.

Two things really ruined it for me. One, I could be wrong, but I don't remember Chigurh killing Jimmy James in the book. I'm pretty sure he brought JJ the money for no reason other than to prove he was good at his job. Two, the shocking, unexpected death of the protagonist is fully justified by the circumstances, but the movie rushes it, and cuts out the most heartbreaking part. It's just not the same if he's not shot to death in a hotel room he rented for a female hitchhiker, after renting a separate room for himself. Couple that with the edited down final confrontation between Llewelyn's wife and Chigurh, and the movie just isn't unfair enough.