No Country For REAL Men! HA HA
First of all, Just kidding on the title of my reply. My father bought this movie for me as a birthday gift, on Blu-Ray(can't believe at 44 I still get B-day gifts from everyone!) Well, my cousin joined my father and I for the watching of NCFOM. We liked the whole working up of the story, the cinematography really impressed me, and with a guy like Tommy Lee Jones in this film, who in almost every film he has been in, manages to make his charecter seem hard edged and determined, we all felt this movie would have some form of finality to it. But, for some reason, about halfway through the film, I just blurted this out: "Watch and see, they are going to leave it all in the air". (with that whole "Life just sucks sometimes and that's that" kind of message) I read everything about the typical "Hollywood Ending" being absent and that alot of people were looking for that type of ending, and that reason being listed as to why anyone who liked this film, being their reason for liking it (wow! I think I even confused myself with that one) It's not that this film not being typical . that caused me to dislike it, it's the fact that you had Tommy Lee Jones playing the "Old Style" type of law man, who was portrayed as the guy who was going to get his man in the end. The story led you to that, on so many different occasions during this film. But, because it was a COEN brothers film, and more importantly, because the COEN brothers knew it was a COEN brothers film, I feel that they felt like they had to make sure that they left everything to like 20 different possiblities in the end for no other reason but to be different. My feelings are this: BY now, everybody is basically aware of the fact that "Life Sucks" and more times than not, the nice guy does finish last.(Seems I heard that somewhere before). But, when you go out of your way to put the now OLD Tommy Lee Jones, in the OLD law man role, that just happens to be chasing the unstoppable BAD GUY, most people not only expect the typical ending where the old law man gets the "too smart for his own good" BAD GUY in the end, but after that whole "Prelude" to a well deserved painful and merciless *** kicking followed by a bullet to the forehead that the bad guy seemed to be working himself torwards--that this movie prepared us for, again, people (most of them anyway) not only expect that typical ending that I just explained, they really WANTED that kind of ending too! IMHO anyway. BTW, both my cousin, and my father, were very let down by the ending. They just expected something much more explosive to happen after all of those nasty looking murders went un-punished.
Also, in regard to the reply to this thread that asked, When is the last time that a movie that was considered to be bad(not sure he said bad or not), was able to have generated replies that took up as many pages as this one did? I'll throw this reply out there, though it uses a different sort of subject matter. and I quote: The People who like him, say they listen to him because they want to hear what he's going to say next, and the people who say they don't like him say they listen to him because they want to hear what he is going to say next. (That was the programming director's explanation of why HOWARD STERN was doing unbelievable share ratings, when he was so obviously hated by so many) The following week, the programming director for 66 WNBC in New York was fired.
Controversial material, always generates alot of talk, and ink. Both good and bad. NCFOM won best picture, so alot of people who didn't see it in the theater, got it on DVD or BD, as soon as it came out, thus, the controversy began as to why best picture? and why not best picture? That's how it's always seemed to be, to me anyway.
Sorry if I caused any long yawns all.
All the best to all. Joe B.
