The MoFo Movie Club Discussion - No Country For Old Men

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A system of cells interlinked
Ha, I thought I was the only one that caught the hat. I grew up in Tucson, AZ, so I am familiar with the styles and incarnations of western hats. I actually thought it was somehow going to play into the film, knowing the Coen's tongue-in-cheek use of hats in some of their other films. I thought my keen eyes had caught on to a subtle clue that perhaps woody wasn't who he said he was or something. It just looked like it was someone else's hat.

Nope, wardrobe just didn't do their research is all.

Not that it matters. Film is still great.

Ruf - How about the actor that played Jones' brother? I thought he was great, as well, Very genuine.
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



Originally Posted by Sedai
How about the actor that played [Jones'] brother? I thought he was great, as well, Very genuine.


It's an Uncle, not a brother. That's Barry Corbin, best known as Maurice the retired astronaut who owns most of the town on "Northern Exposure" (1990-1995) as well as "Lonesome Dove" (1989), WarGames (1983), Urban Cowboy (1980), Stir Crazy (1980) and literally dozens of other movies and TV shows. He also has a scene with Tommy Lee Jones in last year's In the Valley of Elah as his retired MP friend in the R.V. he meets at the diner (he and Tommy didn't share any scenes in "Lonesome Dove" as Corbin was paired with Chris Cooper until his character is killed fairly early on by Blue Duck).

Barry is definitely an authentic Texan, born and raised in Lamesa, which is south of Lubbock. Corbin has a ranch outside of Fort Worth. Tommy Lee's ranch is near San Antonio.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



A system of cells interlinked
How Corbin got by me, I don't know, maybe I was just too wrapped up in the scene to recognize him. He sure looks different from the guy I was used to seeing in Wargames et al.

I loved this line in the scene:

"Whatcha got ain't nothin new. This country's hard on people, you can't stop what's coming, it ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity. "



I just dont get that people dont get the point of the Uncle scene. He fits perfectly into TLJ's narrative about the growing social malaise - and that while you cant do anything about it, you cant give up either. So basically, just keep fighting....and then die. On your porch. Being shot down. By cold-blooded killers who are hunting you because you kept fighting.



Oh, and I, too, am a fan of Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton. Anton's obsession with not getting blood on him was a bit played out, but I just thought it was a tried and true plot device used to convey a person with a psychosis. As expected, I took it as an insight into his psyche. He kills people, but doesnt want blood touching him. Also, he had a strange code of honor - a man of chance - a gambler, who honors the "luck" of the coin toss.

What I thought was most interesting about it was how hard it was for them to take Anton down. It was the 80s, and law enforcement wasnt prepared for someone so ruthless. As of today, a man as rudimentary as Anton would be outdated and hunted down and destroyed posthaste.

But in all, its just as Llywellyn said at the end:

I knowed you was crazy when I first laid eyes on you....

Finally. Isnt it interesting how all of them (even Llywellyn) were hardbitten enough to have a resignation to their fate? Josh Brolin's character was the only one that initially expressed that frenzied desire to change the future and save his wife's life.

I havent read the book, but it makes me wonder if what they are trying to say is that maturity accepts that resistance is futile, evil is sure, and that end is inevitable?
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It's an Uncle, not a brother. That's Barry Corbin, best known as Maurice the retired astronaut who owns most of the town on "Northern Exposure" (1990-1995) as well as "Lonesome Dove" (1989), WarGames (1983), Urban Cowboy (1980), Stir Crazy (1980) and literally dozens of other movies and TV shows. He also has a scene with Tommy Lee Jones in last year's In the Valley of Elah as his retired MP friend in the R.V. he meets at the diner (he and Tommy didn't share any scenes in "Lonesome Dove" as Corbin was paired with Chris Cooper until his character is killed fairly early on by Blue Duck).

Barry is definitely an authentic Texan, born and raised in Lamesa, which is south of Lubbock. Corbin has a ranch outside of Fort Worth. Tommy Lee's ranch is near San Antonio.
I've always enjoyed watching Corbin on screen and was sorry to see him looking so old in this film. I hope the wheelchair was only a prop. Don't know if he was made-up but he sure looked old and sickly. Damn good actor still, with a damn good Texas accent.



What I thought was most interesting about it was how hard it was for them to take Anton down. It was the 80s, and law enforcement wasnt prepared for someone so ruthless. As of today, a man as rudimentary as Anton would be outdated and hunted down and destroyed posthaste.
I don't think you can make that assumption. The most successful mass murders don't get caught and so are not known; they just go on killing for years. That was true in the 1980s and still true today. Despite the weekly successes on TV programs like CSI, a cunning psychopath is, with any luck, just as hard to spot and capture today as he was then.

Finally. Isnt it interesting how all of them (even Llywellyn) were hardbitten enough to have a resignation to their fate? Josh Brolin's character was the only one that initially expressed that frenzied desire to change the future and save his wife's life.
This fatalism isn't all that rare or even recent in movies. Look at Elijah Cook Jr. taking the glass of poison from Bob Steele and, knowing what it is, still drinking it in The Big Sleep back in the 1940s. I think there was as much or maybe even more fatalism among people like the James gang and pursuing lawmen after the Civil War; Dilliger, Bonnie and Clyde, and others after World War I and during the Great Depression, plus some of the people who emerged from the horrors of World War II.

. . . it makes me wonder if what they are trying to say is that maturity accepts that resistance is futile, evil is sure, and that end is inevitable?
I don't think that's maturity. You'll find that as you get older, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and 100 years from now nothing you do will have made a difference anyhow. Notice how eager and peppie Jone's deputy was, all ready to start tracking down killers. But Jones has been doing this for years. He knows there's no hurry because even if you catch this one, another will come along. You can only spend just so much time trying to bail the ocean dry before you get used up, burned out, and just don't care anymore.



I saw both No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood this weekend. Country was interesting and the violence wasn't as off-putting as I had feared it would be. None of the characters who were killed were developed to the point whether I cared if they lived or died, so it was like shooting paper targets. Like reading about thousands of Chinese killed in the earthquake; so many so far away, you just can't relate to it.

I remember someone in the film mentioning at one point that one of the dead folks was "a former colonel" or maybe Lt. Col. I assume that was the apparent businessman who the killer walks into the office and shoots. That was as close as any of the victims came to developing a distinctive background. Plus some are killed off-screen, which makes the victims even more distant.

One killing that I didn't understand is the woman that Bell sees floating in the pool after the big shoot-out at the motel. That didn't make sense to me. I think the guy the gunmen were looking for was in his apartment, not with the woman at the pool. And if they were trying to sneak up on him, would they shoot a woman off to the side thereby alerting him? I don't think she was in the line of fire so that she was hit by a stray round. Too far off to the side from the door to the motel room. And if one of the escaping gunman was supposed to have shot her while getting away, I don't think he would have wasted the time or that she would still have been there after the shooting started. I think the Coen brothers just stuck the body in the pool for decorative effect.

The only real question I had at the end of the film was that scene where Bell is outside the motel door with the tell-tale hole where the lock was shot out, and we are shown the psycho inside the room with his weapon and the outside light shinning through the hole in the lock. But then when Bell opens the door, making a target of himself with the light behind him, no one is there. And the killer couldn't have escaped through the locked bathroom window. So what was that all about? Bell picturing in his mind the killer waiting for him? If so, why does he make such a target of himself when he enters the room? I think that scene was just dishonest--an artificial attempt to increase the tension. I also think that someone like that killer wouldn't have left behind the dime he used to remove the air conditioning grate. It might have his fingerprint on it. But of course, it is put there to tell the audience he's got the money. So I think the whole scene is dishonest and phoney, not up to the quality of the rest of the film. It's also the closest that Bell ever comes to the killer who is already long gone. But maybe that was OK with Bell. Maybe he was just too tired of it all to risk dying in a musty motel room.

Country was an OK movie, but I think Blood was better because the main character was more interesting and played by a better actor who tends to take on the individual shading of his roles like Paul Muni used to do. And with a couple of exceptions, the script-writer knew something about the early oil industry. There were mistakes, however: the worst being that an oil promoter never buys the land that he drills; he buys the mineral rights under that land. The original owners keep the surface property.



The People's Republic of Clogher
MoFo never ceases to amaze me.

I now know something about Western hats that I didn't know 10 minutes ago. All these years I was thinking that big Hoss Cartwright merely had a weirdly-shaped head...

I didn't clock Barry Corbin until the credits either.
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I am half agony, half hope.

Oh, and I, too, am a fan of Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton. Anton's obsession with not getting blood on him was a bit played out, but I just thought it was a tried and true plot device used to convey a person with a psychosis. As expected, I took it as an insight into his psyche. He kills people, but doesnt want blood touching him. Also, he had a strange code of honor - a man of chance - a gambler, who honors the "luck" of the coin toss.
I thought Chigurh saw himself as the 'end of the line' for the people he came across, their destiny, not a man of chance. The coin toss was merely a way of letting those he wasn't hired to go after of postponing death. The fact that he let the coin toss decide if the person lived or not just added to his evilness. He could care less how the toss turned out. That's what made him so frightening to me.
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I thought Chigurh saw himself as the 'end of the line' for the people he came across, their destiny, not a man of chance.
That brings to mind a movie I saw years ago--don't even remember it's name now--but involved a hired killer going around killing folks with the help of his "manager" Eli Wallach, who would handle the contracts and tell the killer who to go kill. What made Wallach's role so memorable (aside from the fact he was such a great actor) was that he collected "last words." The impassive killer (picture someone like Sterling Hayden) would come back and tell him the last thing the victim said before he was murdered, and Wallach would write it down in a little black book. Now that was cold!

The fact that he let the coin toss decide if the person lived or not just added to his evilness. He could care less how the toss turned out. That's what made him so frightening to me.
But like the last victim told him, "It's not the coin, it's you who decides to kill or not." And he essentially admitted as much with his remark about the coin and him arriving at that spot together.



MoFo never ceases to amaze me.

I now know something about Western hats that I didn't know 10 minutes ago. All these years I was thinking that big Hoss Cartwright merely had a weirdly-shaped head...
C'mon, even without knowing about hats, I'll bet you thought there was something odd-looking about Woody in that film that maybe you couldn't quite put your finger on!

As for Hoss, I never could understand him wearing that out-of-the-box hat. I know actor Dan Blocker knew better, since he was from Texas. More than that, he attended college at Sul Ross in Alpine, Tex., where they offer a major in rodeo, including riding rough stock! Now even if Hoss didn't take the course, he had to be aware of the standard quarterhorse crease in the crown and the popular front-and-back "bullrider dip" of the brim.



I haven't commented here yet, largely because I just don't know what to say. I am relatively certain that the first half of this film is flawless, or very nearly so. The thing that strikes me most, I think, is that it builds tension without the typical tricks of the trade. It doesn't use excessively gimmicky camera angles or overt musical cues to tell us when to be alert. We know exactly what's happening, and the events in and of themselves produce the tension. That may not sound important, but as I see more films as time goes on, I begin to appreciate how rare it is.

But, to get to the reason I haven't given a real reply: I just don't know what I think of the last handful of scenes. Too much happens, and I can't seem to digest it all, not even now. Needless to say, I could really do with seeing this again.



I haven't commented here yet, largely because I just don't know what to say. I am relatively certain that the first half of this film is flawless, or very nearly so. The thing that strikes me most, I think, is that it builds tension without the typical tricks of the trade. It doesn't use excessively gimmicky camera angles or overt musical cues to tell us when to be alert. We know exactly what's happening, and the events in and of themselves produce the tension.
Yoda, I respect all to hell your knowledge of movies, and I know where you're coming from in the lack of fancy camera angles and musical cues. But to an ol' boy like me who grew up in and knows that part of Texas (I used to date an ol' gal who lived in Marfa; she later became my first ex-wife and she and our daughter lived there for years), the first quarter of the film had lots of things that I couldn't help wondering about. I know this wouldn't matter to most of you who have seen the movie, but:

When that hunter starts tracking that wounded antelope, I'm asking myself, "What's he gonna do when he finds it--carry it piggy-back back to his pickup?" Tracking the blood trail is one thing, but when he gets to wherever the animal bled out, he's gonna wish he had a pickup to haul it back with. I don't think that animal could have gotten so far, and certainly the blood trail wouldn't have ended after crossing that of the wounded dog.

Why didn't he have some water when he found the surviving Mexican drug runner? You go walking in the heat of the sun in West Texas without a canteen, and you're just begging for sunstroke and heat exhaustion.

Who later came back and killed that survivor and took all those drug packets out of the pickup? Shifting a pickup bed-full of any material is hard and tiring work under that desert sun. It would be much, much easier and faster to just drive off in the loaded pickup. Provided it would still run. But to find out if it would run, you'd have to pull the wounded man out of the driver's seat. But they didn't--just shot out the side window to kill a dying man.

But the biggest question to me is how did that Barney Fife deputy single-handedly capture that psycho killer at the start of that movie. I mean he takes that air-tank weapon away from him and gets him handcuffed--how did he manage that and then is dumb enough to sit with his back to the suspect so he can sneak up on him? Why didn't the killer make a break before then? There was no way he could know how many people would be at the sheriff's office when they arrived. Even little ol' West Texas towns have dispatchers and jailers and often visiting state highway patrolmen on the premises who could help fight off an attacker. But I did like all the heel scuffs on the floor after the deputy was killed. That was a nice, realistic touch to an otherwise strange event.

The air-tank weapon was a nice odd touch, an innovation worthy of Hitchcock. But not practical for a real killer. It's awkward, bulky, attracts attention, and apparently is only effective up close and then mostly to bust up cheap door locks. Anything more than a few inches away, and he has to go for a long gun.

There were some other things, like why did he kill the two guys who brought him to the shootout scene? They obviously were all working for the same drug lord or cartel. Why drop them at the scene of the shoot-out, which gives the authorities 20 more chances to identify a fingerprint and start connecting the dead to their still-living associates? The guy may have been crazy, but he was more cunning than that.

Like I said, most viewers don't worry about such things; no reason they should. But I couldn't help wonder. I also noticed some land features that are not typical of West Texas, particularly one shot of sort of rolling hills. West Texas is generally flat like the hunting and shoot-out locations (and there are lots of antelope over around Alpine and Marfa). The hills must have been shot over in New Mexico.

But I did like the movie. Just probably not as much as the rest of the forum.



The People's Republic of Clogher
Now even if Hoss didn't take the course, he had to be aware of the standard quarterhorse crease in the crown and the popular front-and-back "bullrider dip" of the brim.
I'm afraid I got lost after 'standard'.

I almost bought No Country For Old Men today but was confronted by something of a quandary - Do I spend 8 quid on a largely vanilla R2 DVD or, as I've been meaning to, start collecting stuff on Blu Ray (which would make it 20 quid for a largely vanilla disc)?

I didn't have the same problems switching from VHS to DVD as the quality difference was immense so must be subcouciously (which has now become conciously, as I've bloomin' written it down!) wondering if BD discs aren't a short-lived stepping stone.

EDIT - I figured that Bardem's 'airgun' was only really used by him for gaining access to his victims' homes. The handily lethal bi-product of this being useful when he didn't have a firearm to hand.



I'm afraid I got lost after 'standard'.
Yeah, you kinda have to be into Texas and western wear and honky tonks to even give a damn about such things! Sorry.

EDIT - I figured that Bardem's 'airgun' was only really used by him for gaining access to his victims' homes. The handily lethal bi-product of this being useful when he didn't have a firearm to hand.
I think you're right. It just doesn't work in a real showdown.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Hey rufnek, I have to ask you, besides O Brother, Where Art Thou?, what other Coen Bros. movies have you seen? They've really gone out of their way not to factor in documentary realism in any of their films, even though this one includes some of their most naturalistic scenes. All the Coens' movies seem to be more like dreams than any form of reality.
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Yoda, I respect all to hell your knowledge of movies, and I know where you're coming from in the lack of fancy camera angles and musical cues. But to an ol' boy like me who grew up in and knows that part of Texas (I used to date an ol' gal who lived in Marfa; she later became my first ex-wife and she and our daughter lived there for years), the first quarter of the film had lots of things that I couldn't help wondering about. I know this wouldn't matter to most of you who have seen the movie, but:

When that hunter starts tracking that wounded antelope, I'm asking myself, "What's he gonna do when he finds it--carry it piggy-back back to his pickup?" Tracking the blood trail is one thing, but when he gets to wherever the animal bled out, he's gonna wish he had a pickup to haul it back with. I don't think that animal could have gotten so far, and certainly the blood trail wouldn't have ended after crossing that of the wounded dog.

Why didn't he have some water when he found the surviving Mexican drug runner? You go walking in the heat of the sun in West Texas without a canteen, and you're just begging for sunstroke and heat exhaustion.

Who later came back and killed that survivor and took all those drug packets out of the pickup? Shifting a pickup bed-full of any material is hard and tiring work under that desert sun. It would be much, much easier and faster to just drive off in the loaded pickup. Provided it would still run. But to find out if it would run, you'd have to pull the wounded man out of the driver's seat. But they didn't--just shot out the side window to kill a dying man.

But the biggest question to me is how did that Barney Fife deputy single-handedly capture that psycho killer at the start of that movie. I mean he takes that air-tank weapon away from him and gets him handcuffed--how did he manage that and then is dumb enough to sit with his back to the suspect so he can sneak up on him? Why didn't the killer make a break before then? There was no way he could know how many people would be at the sheriff's office when they arrived. Even little ol' West Texas towns have dispatchers and jailers and often visiting state highway patrolmen on the premises who could help fight off an attacker. But I did like all the heel scuffs on the floor after the deputy was killed. That was a nice, realistic touch to an otherwise strange event.

The air-tank weapon was a nice odd touch, an innovation worthy of Hitchcock. But not practical for a real killer. It's awkward, bulky, attracts attention, and apparently is only effective up close and then mostly to bust up cheap door locks. Anything more than a few inches away, and he has to go for a long gun.

There were some other things, like why did he kill the two guys who brought him to the shootout scene? They obviously were all working for the same drug lord or cartel. Why drop them at the scene of the shoot-out, which gives the authorities 20 more chances to identify a fingerprint and start connecting the dead to their still-living associates? The guy may have been crazy, but he was more cunning than that.

Like I said, most viewers don't worry about such things; no reason they should. But I couldn't help wonder. I also noticed some land features that are not typical of West Texas, particularly one shot of sort of rolling hills. West Texas is generally flat like the hunting and shoot-out locations (and there are lots of antelope over around Alpine and Marfa). The hills must have been shot over in New Mexico.

But I did like the movie. Just probably not as much as the rest of the forum.

Great post man.

But my only retort is that it is a movie and is obviously supposed to be entertaining. You could apply the 20 questions theory to thousands of films and poke massive holes through them but that would take the fun out of watching them.

What if Marion Crane had arrived at the Bates Motel and there were other guests staying there?? No movie! No famous murder scene.

I'm picky as hell about film details too but when they are relatively surface I tend to let them go, unless they're brutally affecting the plot I try not to over analyze. But your post is reminiscent of film critic territory with films they don't dig that much...and I respect that.
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Great post man.

But my only retort is that it is a movie and is obviously supposed to be entertaining. You could apply the 20 questions theory to thousands of films and poke massive holes through them but that would take the fun out of watching them.

What if Marion Crane had arrived at the Bates Motel and there were other guests staying there?? No movie! No famous murder scene.

I'm picky as hell about film details too but when they are relatively surface I tend to let them go, unless they're brutally affecting the plot I try not to over analyze. But your post is reminiscent of film critic territory with films they don't dig that much...and I respect that.
The Bates Motel had long been bypassed by the main highway and looked so ratty, so that it's believeable that Janet Leigh is the only guest. It's also possible that there was no one else in the sheriff's office. No prisoners. Nothing. But my point was that the killer would be taking a risk assuming that.

But the opening scene of No Country just hit me in the face, because I've hiked and hunted in West Texas and it's not a place where you want to be without transportation or water under that hot sun. Like you said, it has no effect on the film, but I couldn't help but notice that mistake. Generally, the film was interesting, however. I didn't dislike it.

As for other Coen films, in reply to Mark F's post:

Oh, Brother, of course, was based on the “Odyssey,” so it was very much like a myth, full of strange people and occurances. However, the governor seeking election in the movie was named for a real Texas governor, W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, a songwriter who parlayed a radio program sponsored by a flour company and featuring the “Light-Crust Doughboys” country band into a successful gubernatorial election in 1938. Moreover, in the movie, Pappy’s career paralleled that of Jimmie Davis who wrote the most recorded country song ever, “You Are My Sunshine,” in 1940 and was then elected governor of Louisiana in 1943 primarily on the popularity of that song. People who know anything about country music could also spot the reference to Mother Maybelle in that 3-piece country band on the flat-bed truck singing some of the Carter Family's early hits.

From the very start, I liked Blood Simple, which I think is their best, most down-to-earth, and most interesting film noir crime film. Dan Hedaya and M. Emmet Walsh really brought that movie to life. There has never been a hitman like Walsh in film, although being older and fatter, he’s something like the no-name “operative” in several of Dashiell Hammett's short stories.

Liked Miller’s Crossing, too; one of my all-time favorites, which also reminded me of Dashiell Hammett’s tales of crime and police corruption, although the corruption part was a little more blatantly over the top than the official corruption in real life or Hammett’s books.

Liked Fargo, with all of the Scandinavian accents and frustrated plans. That was a little more realistic than Crossing, although it was based on a really foolish plan for getting money that went terribly wrong.

The Man Who Wasn't There was an incredible character study and an ironic treasure, although I still have to look up the title to remember what the film was about. It just didn’t click with me like the others.

Raising Arizona was a funny screwball comedy. The Hudsucker Proxy played out like a strange dream; Barton Fink, another favorite, was like an entertaining nightmare; and the extremely well-done The Big Lebowski was like an LSD trip. All were wonderfully funny.

I loved their contribution to Paris, je t'aime—probably the most interesting segment of that film. But Intolerable Cruelty never really engaged me, and The Ladykillers remake doesn’t compare with the original British film of that same name. The last two and Man Who Wasn’t There are probably the only Coen films I don’t care to sit through again. No Country was better than those and also better in some ways than Hudsucker and Arizona but not nearly as good as Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, or Fargowhere the viewer knows something about the people being killed and cares who lives and who dies. I liked O, Brother better, too. The music soundtrack contributed a lot to that film, just as no soundtrack was a great contribution to No Country.



Yoda, I respect all to hell your knowledge of movies
Thanks, but you shouldn't. Lots of you guys put me to shame. My only consolation is that many of you have a couple of decades on me, so I've got some time to catch up.

and I know where you're coming from in the lack of fancy camera angles and musical cues. But to an ol' boy like me who grew up in and knows that part of Texas (I used to date an ol' gal who lived in Marfa; she later became my first ex-wife and she and our daughter lived there for years), the first quarter of the film had lots of things that I couldn't help wondering about. I know this wouldn't matter to most of you who have seen the movie, but:
When that hunter starts tracking that wounded antelope, I'm asking myself, "What's he gonna do when he finds it--carry it piggy-back back to his pickup?" Tracking the blood trail is one thing, but when he gets to wherever the animal bled out, he's gonna wish he had a pickup to haul it back with. I don't think that animal could have gotten so far, and certainly the blood trail wouldn't have ended after crossing that of the wounded dog.

Why didn't he have some water when he found the surviving Mexican drug runner? You go walking in the heat of the sun in West Texas without a canteen, and you're just begging for sunstroke and heat exhaustion.

Who later came back and killed that survivor and took all those drug packets out of the pickup? Shifting a pickup bed-full of any material is hard and tiring work under that desert sun. It would be much, much easier and faster to just drive off in the loaded pickup. Provided it would still run. But to find out if it would run, you'd have to pull the wounded man out of the driver's seat. But they didn't--just shot out the side window to kill a dying man.

But the biggest question to me is how did that Barney Fife deputy single-handedly capture that psycho killer at the start of that movie. I mean he takes that air-tank weapon away from him and gets him handcuffed--how did he manage that and then is dumb enough to sit with his back to the suspect so he can sneak up on him? Why didn't the killer make a break before then? There was no way he could know how many people would be at the sheriff's office when they arrived. Even little ol' West Texas towns have dispatchers and jailers and often visiting state highway patrolmen on the premises who could help fight off an attacker. But I did like all the heel scuffs on the floor after the deputy was killed. That was a nice, realistic touch to an otherwise strange event.

The air-tank weapon was a nice odd touch, an innovation worthy of Hitchcock. But not practical for a real killer. It's awkward, bulky, attracts attention, and apparently is only effective up close and then mostly to bust up cheap door locks. Anything more than a few inches away, and he has to go for a long gun.

There were some other things, like why did he kill the two guys who brought him to the shootout scene? They obviously were all working for the same drug lord or cartel. Why drop them at the scene of the shoot-out, which gives the authorities 20 more chances to identify a fingerprint and start connecting the dead to their still-living associates? The guy may have been crazy, but he was more cunning than that.

Like I said, most viewers don't worry about such things; no reason they should. But I couldn't help wonder. I also noticed some land features that are not typical of West Texas, particularly one shot of sort of rolling hills. West Texas is generally flat like the hunting and shoot-out locations (and there are lots of antelope over around Alpine and Marfa). The hills must have been shot over in New Mexico.

But I did like the movie. Just probably not as much as the rest of the forum.
Yeah, these are perfectly good points (though I think Tac explains the air-tank thing pretty well). If you happen to think of them, I imagine they can really take you out of the film, I'm sure. But they didn't occur to me, and thus didn't affect my enjoyment. And, of course, there's something to be said for the feeling a movie gives us when we see it, even if we cannot justify it rationally or are able to dissect it after the fact.

I hope you realize, of course, that you've preemptively ruined my inevitable second viewing.



Originally Posted by rufnek
Liked Fargo, with all of the Scandinavian accents and frustrated plans. That was a little more realistic than Crossing, although it was based on a really foolish plan for getting money that went terribly wrong.
Despite the "Based on a true story" tag that opens the film, it is actually all fiction, made up whole cloth by Joel & Ethan Coen. That some poor woman may have died looking for non-existent fortunes along a snowy highway doesn't change that it's only a movie. As for whether or not the Japanese woman's death is really about looking for that loot, see the article on the Snopes website HERE, though like the movie itself it's certainly more interesting if you think of it as true.

And you should add your thoughts on the Coen canon to THIS thread.