Blowing Smoke: A movie about poker, cigars, women, and getting screwed

Wednesday
January 02, 2008

More boring crap where I whine about the ending of No Country for Old Men

Male Jim Treacher | Category: Movies
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(See previous whining.) I just read the book, and...

...while I admire the Coens for sticking to the novel so closely, I think they kind of screwed up the ending that way. It works in the book, because Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is at least as much of the focus as Moss vs. Chigurh. Literally every other chapter is Bell reminiscing about his past and worrying about his future. Whereas in the movie, since it's, you know, a movie, the action stuff is more prominent in your mind. Tommy Lee Jones is great, but for the first three-quarters of the flick his role is to follow the trail of bodies and mutter Texasy aphorisms. It's not really apparent that he's the main character until the other two leave the picture, literally.

On the other hand, the Coens did make some notable improvements. The whole sequence with the dog chasing Moss isn't in the book, and McCarthy offhandedly gives away that Chigurh is tracking the money with the transponder, which the Coens handle more dramatically. But sticking to McCarthy's ending the way they did? Sorry, but I just think it was a mistake.

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Comments

Couldn't agree more. Act 3 sucked.

Comment by Irwin Handleman on January 2, 2008 6:33 PM

I understand the point of it, though: it's reaction to the Hollywood Ending nonsense they usually give, where the good guy triumphs and the bad guys are vanquished. Well, I guess there was a point to those endings, because the movie did sort of hit like a gut shot. But then, maybe that was the point.

I was very shocked to see it turned to a movie. You were damned right about the violence aspect: in the book it almost didn't register. I wasn't ever thinking "this is a story with violence in it", it was tacked on in the book and mostly irrelevant, or it felt that way. I was actually pretty shocked (I hadn't seen an ad before the gf dragged me off to see it) that it contained any, and here it was the focus. It almost felt like another story altogether.

Comment by James Wiggum on January 2, 2008 7:37 PM

Part of the reason the violence didn't register might be because McCarthy doesn't really dwell on it. Chigurh dispatches the two flunkies in a single sentence. Which fits the character, because it's no more or less important to him than anything else he did that day. It's just as quick in the movie, but there you're actually seeing it.

I don't need a Hollywood Ending. I just would have liked to have seen what happened to Moss.

Comment by Treach on January 2, 2008 8:04 PM

Ok then, quick question: do you think it got the essence of the book correct? I don't think so, but I also don't think it's an insult: it's its own kind of story. I mean, did you like it?

Comment by James Wiggum on January 4, 2008 7:22 PM