Wednesday, April 2, 2008

No Country For Weird Flicks
8:37 PM

No Country For Weird Flicks

On my quest to catch up on "movies I missed", our 2nd week consisted of We Own The Night (decent), Mr. Woodcock (TRASH), The Kingdom (my wife hadn't seen it, and it ended up playing out much better the 1st time I saw it) & No Country For Old Men.
 
I had yet to hear a bad review about No Country, so I figured why not, they hooked us up with a 10% military discount & half off each movie, so I paid $6 for 4 movies…but I guess it's not a steal if the majority of the movies suck, huh??
 
*NOTE- if you haven't seen the movie yet, don't read past here*
 
Anyway, so No Country, it's eerie…well at least the villain is.  Dude pretty much kills everybody he comes in contact with.  A guy stumbles onto 2 million dollars & a bunch of drugs that belongs to Sugar (the villain, that's not how you spell it, but that's how you pronounce it) & Sugar is pretty much like Freddy Kreuger, errwhere you run, he's a step ahead. 
 
In the end, buddy dies & there's no final clash between the guy and Sugar (the mexicans kill him before Sugar gets to him) or Sugar & Tommy Lee Jones (the cop), he just tells this tale of some dreams he had the night before & it's over.  I was playing with my phone during this part until I heard my wife say "huh", only to look up & see credits rolling.  As an average movie guy, you expect the norm; a final clash between the protagonist & antagonist & the result is a conflict resolution.  But you don't get that here.
 
I enjoyed the movie (except the bodies, did he have to kill so many people??  Geez…), but initially the end was a letdown to say the least, until I went online.
 
Come to find out, Tommy Lee is the main character, not ol boy with the money.  And even then, we're not to look at the movie from the perspective of the characters, we're to focus on the story.  Sugar represents fate, our fate is inevitable.  We can't bargain with fate (remember how everybody said "you don't have to do this" shortly before they died?  Even when Sugar gave them an option with the coin, they still ended up dying.  Bargaining or trying to resolve the issue only prolonged the inevitable). 

When Tommy Lee is talking to ol boy in the wheelchair, he calls him vain for trying to avenge "fate".  He is not the end all be all like he thinks he is. Fate is going to get you whether you're ready or not.  It's about the story, not the characters.
 
Sugar ends up with the money (as "fate" would have it), ol boy that found the money dead & ultimately irrelevant to the grand scheme of the story & there's no other resolution.
 
At least that's my breakdown of it…what y'all think???
 
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