Alright, I’ve had it. The Coen brothers have struck again, and once again I am left shaking my head in disbelief as everyone else falls over themselves in utter rapturous praise. This film, which may rank among the DUMBEST films ever to achieve wide-spread critical acclaim, won the Academy Award for best picture and best adapted screenplay?! It’s time for me to hold forth on the many flaws and inadequacies of the much-lauded Coen Brothers.

(This review contains major spoilers.)

First, here is the Coen brothers’ general formula, at least in their non-comedy films that I have seen. The first third is usually interesting in a quirky and somewhat suspenseful way. Their trademark stylized dialog seems funny and enjoyable for about the first third also, and their equally stylized camerawork combines with the writing to create an pleasant atmosphere of non-specific anticipation. In the second third, they kind of keep the energy of the first third going, but the story starts to noticeably narrow and simplify, and the stylized dialog starts to ware on you and seem kind of dumb. The poverty of their writing and artistic vision begins to self-manifest as they depend more and more on stylized visuals and random Seinfeldesque conversations.  In the last third, they completely run out of ideas, start killing people off almost randomly, and then it just dissolves into a fetid and unwholesome pudding that you realize you have unknowingly ingested and really wish you could up-chuck.

Okay, with that said, on to No Country For Old Men. No Country is quite interesting for about the first third (if we ignore Tommy Lee Jone’s incomprehensible and unspeakably boring monologue at the beginning of the film.) The scene with Josh Brolin and the dog floating down the river is one I will remember for a long time. The set up is a bit non-specific, but you accept it because of their quirky style and the fact that you effectively connect with Josh Brolin’s plight. He’s a guy running for his life – this virtually guarantees at least minimal viewer interest.

In the middle third you realize that the seemingly amazing narrative possibilities of the first third are not only NOT going to be realized, but they were in fact figments of your hopeful imagination born of the Coen brothers’ stylistic manipulation earlier in the film. The vacuousness of the story begins to dawn on you. The “quirky” dialog starts to seem more and more like filler. They start relying more and more on visual style points (example: the beeping of the homing device as the psycho is driving by the various rooms of the motel – the fact that they are dragging that scene out so long is a clue that they are already running out of ideas.) Other characters we might have expected to develop in interesting ways (Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald) drop away suddenly, and we are left with the two guys duking it out, Terminator-style. New and uninteresting characters that we don’t care about (Woody Harrelson) are suddenly forced on us.

Then in the last third the film turns into a “goat-fuck,” to use a phrase from the movie.

Josh Brolin’s character is the only interesting character in the movie. He is the only character that is at all developed, and he is certainly the only character we care about. He’s just dumb enough to get himself into trouble, but just resourceful enough to make a go of it anyway, and the whole first two thirds of the movie is (let’s face it, shall we) all about whether or not he is going to evade the psycho and make off with the money. So, in the last third of the movie what do the Coen brothers do? They just instantly drop him from the story – he just turns up dead, killed OFF SCREEN!  We don’t even get to see him die! He’s just suddenly dead, and Tommy Lee Jones (who we do not give a rat’s ass about, and who we have not seen on screen for over an hour) is suddenly the main character of the movie.

But it gets worse. Josh Brolin is not even killed by the psycho. He was killed, we are told, by some random Mexicans. Who were they? Well, they were hired by the guy who hired Woody Harrelson to hunt down the psycho in that short-lived and completely unsatisfying subplot that went nowhere. And who was the guy who did the hiring, exactly? How should we know?! We’re never told. Obviously he is connected to the shoot-em-up in the beginning, but we’re never told how. We’re never told who Woody Harrelson is. We’re never even told who Javier Bardem’s character is. We’re never told who those two guys in suits were that he was with in the very beginning, or why he killed them. So the main character, and entire justification for the movie, is just simply erased from the film, leaving an narrative void of epic proportions.

The final third of the movie is just pitiful. Kelly Macdonald is killed for no reason – they try to keep selling the the quirky insanity of the psycho as something having some kind of hidden profoundness, but this whole shtick has by this time long been revealed as pure idiocy substituting for decent script-writing, and as a result her death is just revolting and inane. Then the psycho gets in a car wreck, breaks his arm, and bribes some kids to help him, all this in a scene written like it is a throwaway humor scene from some crap Tarantino film; besides, since when does this guy let anyone he comes in contact with live, without at least flipping a coin? To remain true to his character he should have perforated the two kids with one of his incredibly huge tank-stopping weapons that he carries around all the time, and left them sprawled in ghastly pool of blood. Finally, the film becomes about Tommy Lee Jones and his … dementia, shall we say? He visits some old man living in a single-wide in the country – I still have no idea who that guy was – and they have a rather looooooooooooong conversation that (like the film’s prologue) is largely incomprehensible and unspeakably boring.

Poor Javier Bardem. The guy is an amazing actor, and they give him an Oscar for THIS????!!!! All he has to do is walk around exhibiting … zero emotional range! He IS the Terminator; they didn’t give Arnold an Oscar, did they?! Why couldn’t they give him one for Vicky Christina Barcelona – that was a great performance! Or how about Before Night Falls, another marvelous performance in a movie that was actually decent. But no, he is honored for this ridiculous performance.

And poor Kelly MacDonald. She too is a wonderful actress, but I think she has had her moments on screen (Two Room House and Gosford Park) and now it’s just going to be crap like this for her from here on out – playing weak women getting terrorized and killed. Just like Virginia Madsen, who got to do Sideways and then she’s Harrison Ford’s pathetic, disempowered wife for the rest of her career. It makes you realize that there are very few good roles written for women anymore.

As for Tommy Lee Jones, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an actor looking so lost in his role. Sometimes he suddenly starts channeling The Fugitive! Then he’s acting like the mumbling geriatric weirdos in Synecdoche, New York. Yeah, those Coen brothers are great directors all right!