"No country for old men" - Uh?

No Country For Old Men is probably a movie that everyone’s already seen and written about. I saw it recently and although I found it entertaining and funny, the ending left me somewhat puzzled. Not just me, actually – there was a collective “uh?” moment at the abrupt ending, and quite a few surprised “Is that it?” trend of remarks from the other people in the hall. Of course when the credits started rolling, we all knew that was it.

I’m not saying the movie wasn’t watchable. It was, very. Despite the blood and gore and gratuitous violence, there were plenty of laconic “cowboy”-type and “country wisdom”-type remarks to keep me amused, and enough genuine suspense to make me want to squinch my eyes shut and plug my ears with my fingers. (Yep, I’m a coward and haven’t progressed past childish responses to good scary suspense.)

You couldn’t help but like Josh Brolin for his deadpan dialogue despite his permanent scruffiness (not improved by generous quantities of gore as the movie progressed), Tommy Lee Jones did a great job as the wise-but-tired sheriff, and Javier Bardem was chilling as the relentless psychopathic killer looking for his money. I mean, the Terminator wasn’t as cold-blooded as Bardem’s psychopath, Chigeur - and not even Chigeur's ridiculous hairstyle detracted from that effect. Woody Harrelson entered as a wise-cracking private investigator halfway into the movie, but his contribution to the movie plot wasn’t much more than a slowly widening flood of blood once he’d been killed off.

The thing is, I didn’t find an actual plot to the movie. I do understand that the basic idea was to showcase the soullessness of America, how inured people have become to violence and violent deaths, and so on. But throughout the movie, at key points during key deaths, right up to the end, I kept thinking “NOW I’ll understand the plot” – but in the end, all I understood is that there was no plot.

Perhaps I’m the dumb sort of viewer who needs a rounding-off, closure of some sort… the sort of viewer who is “deaf, dumb and blind to anything that isn't spelled out between commercials on dying TV networks”. (Gee, thanks, Peter Travers.) Perhaps I DO need things spelled out… because I didn’t see the point in all the characters who started out as integral to the movie getting killed along the way, at random. Each killing was just a killing, not leading to a turning point in plot or direction. To me, the movie wasn’t much more than a documentary showcasing the mindless and gratuitous violence in America. But we knew that already.

I haven’t read the book on which the movie was based, so I don’t know how faithful to the book the movie was. Maybe if I read the book, the movie will make more sense… but I just don’t know at this point.