Manhattan is No Country for Men with Canes

The boyfriend and I went on an adventure to see "No Country for Old Men" last night. I fractured my upper tibia playing soccer about six weeks ago, so I'm trying to stay off it as much as possible. We reasoned that taking a Zipcar to Long Island would require less walking from me. Actually, since we ended up having to take a Zipcar from Manhattan (as our car was not returned by the previous user on-time) it was actually not more convenient. But we did get to go frolic in the wilds of Long Island. So much hair gel.

The movie is kind of good. Not quite the world-destroying masterpiece it's been sold as, sadly. Javier Bardem is definitely just as scary and psychopathic and flippant as advertised. And the action sequences and charitable offerings to thriller pacing are all spot-on. One scene, which dials up the pressure on our hero relentlessly, both sonically and visually (the nigh-unrecognizable Josh Brolin cuts the lights and then hears the beep of an approaching transponder, and then the hunt is on), is particularly stunning. The photography is uniformly beautiful, and it's definitely a tighter-edited document than most of the stuff out there (including slack Coen offerings like "The Man Who Wasn't There.")

Sadly, though, the whole enterprise gets bogged down by Tommy Lee Jones' character's faux-meaningful, arthouse-Serious and Mature critique narrative. Jones plays the lawman whose pursuit of Bardem and Brolin offers audiences a perspective through which they can feel morally and intellectually elevated as bystanders to murder. I think I prefer my exploitation less leavened.