This is a film where death may rest on the flip of a coin, the flush of a toilet, a good thought that followed a bad thought. This is death that has no rationale, and it is this paradox that the Coens examine, how we are the only species to question death, to get angry at its indiscriminate cruelty. They show how thoughtless acts can mean the difference between a right turn into a car wash or a wrong turn into a street shoot-out. This is a film where good and evil do not dance with the synchronicity that a Die Hard All Over Again or Lethal Weapon 17 deliver, this is a film that sticks the cattle prod of reality between your eyes, and quietly tells you: it ain’t why, it just is.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments
1 - Kevin Eagan
Thanks for the review. The book was amazing, I hope the movie turns out to be just as exciting.
2 - sed
Most UN-satifying movie experience. Have seem something like this done better in Fargo. It leaves a lot of loose ends, does not follow through with the characters (lead character dies unexpectedly with no followup on that). Left a lot of sour taste in the mouth. Most of the time it was slow. And the last hope, the Sherif, quits his job and ends the movie while talking about his dream.... Yawwwn. If the book ends this way then I don't think much of the book either. After investing more than an hour of your life following the characters and not getting any satifactory result is a shame. Definitely nothing to write home about.
3 - Nigel Simons
Sorry you didn't enjoy it, that is, after all what the ultimate point of a movie is. The movie, I think, reflects the perplexing nature of life, with all its paradoxes and its deep inhumanities, and finds a way of reflecting them by ignoring convention: the good guys lose, the baddie gets away,and things do not turn out how you expect,a bit like life biting you in the behind when you least expect it. I thought it made a refreshing change, but accept its a long way from mainstream entertainment.
4 - Will
The real test of a movie, to me, is would I recommend it to others...NO WAY! THat said the movie contains, great acting, excessive violece, slow in many places, no ending. This is a "critics movie". Not one I would recommend to anyone else.
5 - Enemy Combatant
Dear Mr. Simons, That's the most wonderful film review I've read for quite a long time. Each paragraph is a beautifuly polished literary figurine beaming with comprehension and existentialist smarts. You absolutely "got it". Several peers whose opinions I respect expressed frustration that there was "no resolution", but appreciating sublime cinematography often depends on the scope of one's own journeys.
During the film, flashes of David Lynch's "The Straight Story" and Jones' "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" were impossible to supress.
Hope you have a smashing time taking your English Degree, "this is a film that sticks the cattle prod of reality between your eyes, and quietly tells you: it ain’t why, it just is.", keep that sort of thing coming and First Class Honours will be a right of passage rather than a hard slog.
Yours in Letters, EC.
P.S. If you havn't www.aldaily.com in your favourites column, it's certainly worth considering. Thanks for the joy.
6 - Nigel Simons
It is I who must thank you: I now feel twice blessed, firstly for words of kindness in a world where most kneel at the footstool of fundamentalist selfism, and secondly for the web site address that is now firmly installed in my bookmarks under the 'check daily section' - thank you.