Okay. This is going to be fun. Wild but fun. Not everyone loved NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN even though it won Best Picture. Bob Gale, a screenwriter who I have enormous respect for (among his credits: BACK TO THE FUTURE) is one of those naysayers. He had a few teeny-weenie logic issues and one or two questions. Here's his assessment and I know the comments are going to start flying. I'm just the hockey referee. I drop the puck and you guys go for it.
The puck drops....NOW.
It made no sense at all!
Javier the bad guy wanders around Texas doing a bad impression of “The Terminator,” lugging a big compressed air tank and hose instead of just carrying a pistol with a silencer that he could put in his pocket. Right.
The Deputy arrests Javier, takes him to the station, then turns his back on him (perhaps not noticing he is twice his size) to call Tommy Lee instead of putting him in jail first. Right.
Tommy Lee doesn’t put out an APB for the entire state of Texas regarding the killer of his own deputy. A cop killer is on the loose but no one knows. Right. Of course, maybe he did, but since nobody in the whole movie listens to a radio or watches television because there’s just so much to do in west Texas, how would anyone know?
Then we meet Josh Brolin, hunting deer in the desert – there’s a natural habitat for you – but he doesn’t have a canteen with water. Right.
Then, after ripping off a bunch of dead drug dealers who have been massacred with machine gun fire, Josh decides in the middle of the night to go back to the desert to bring water to one of the dying drug dealers he just ripped off. Great idea. Does he wait until morning? No, he chooses to do this at night when you can’t see shit. And he doesn’t bring a flashlight. Double right.
It just so happens that the very next day when Josh and his wife clear out of their trailer, that’s the day when the phone bill comes so Javier can find it. Right.
Plus, knowing that drug dealers are going to be after him, he decides not to tell the lady who runs the Trailer Park a cover story that might get the bad guys off his trail. Oh, he’s brilliant.
Why does Javier kill the 2 guys who at the scene of the crime who have just hired him to find their money? Did it not occur to him that they would be working for other guys who might not like having their people killed? Does he think this will look good on his resume?
And these guys just happen to have the most powerful transponder and tracking device in Texas, which can pick up a signal from miles away. James Bond didn’t even have this. Right.
When Josh Brolin finds the transponder, he doesn’t throw it out the window to decoy the bad guy or conceive some clever plan to lure Javier into a trap. No, he just sits right next to it. Genius.
Josh Brolin fires a shotgun with double aught buck at Javier who is 6 feet away from him behind a door and he doesn’t kill him, nor blow up his compressed air tank. What planet are we on where the laws of physics work in such mysterious ways?
There’s a big burst of machine gun fire in two different motels, and then a whole bunch of shooting in the main street of a dead quiet small town and it doesn’t bring the police or any armed citizens. Oh, wait – I missed the part that explained we’re on a different planet. Or something.
Josh Brolin can just walk across the border into Mexico AT A BORDER CROSSING, dripping blood, without being stopped by the Mexican authorities. What is this, some special “Bleeding-fugitives-can-get-into-Mexico-free Day?” Where exactly was the sign that was advertising this promotion? At least they could have had Josh bribe the border cop.
Javier is looking all over Texas for Josh and can’t find him, but Woody Harrelson finds him immediately in a hospital in Mexico. I guess I also missed the scene where they explained that Woody had super-powers.
Woody can find the money, but Javier can’t. Wow, those super-powers of his are really amazing. And Josh decided to keep the money in its original suitcase because obviously he knew there would be no way the bad guys would be looking for THAT. Oh wait, I forgot, he’s a Vietnam Vet so the war must have messed up his ability to think.
Who killed who in the El Paso motel? How did the mother-in-law die? In the shootout? Then why didn’t Josh’s wife get killed? And what was the point of the woman at the pool who wants Josh to have a beer with her? What finally happened to the money? There’s a whole bunch of carnage at this motel, but Tommy Lee and the local Sheriff have time to have coffee so the Sheriff can complain about kids with green hair. Sure, why not.
Did Javier kill the wife or not? And how come Javier just happens to have an auto accident at the end? I guess it was because he was looking in his rear view mirror, worried that the 2 kids on bikes might have some serious armament and be coming after him because, goddammit, they look like dangerous bad kids in the employ of a rival drug dealer. The one kid gets money and the other doesn’t. Why doesn’t the other kid rat out Javier to the cops? Meanwhile, Javier is just walking down the street, dripping blood, with police sirens approaching and no one is going to notice? Oh yeah – I keep forgetting that it’s another planet. That would be Planet Deaf Dumb Blind and Stupid.
Meanwhile, Tommy Lee is pontificating about nothing with some crippled fucker in the middle of nowhere. And everybody talks….real….slow….because…it’s….real…important…philosophical….existential…claptrap…and…this….is…a ….real….important…motion…picture…
And then the movie ends with Tommy Lee telling his wife about some fucking dream he had? What the hell was that????? Oh wait – I get it – the whole fucking movie was his dream.
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