My female friends and I are calling it No Country For Old Women. Oh, those Coen brothers. Yes I'm sure their latest noir thriller is a brooding masterpiece peopled by Southern grotesques and a portrait of autonomous evil (Oscar nominee Javier Bardem in a fright wig) that will go down in screen history. But does it have to be so violent?
There's something about the casual offing of all the victims - the weapon of choice is a cattle gun, normally used in abattoirs - that makes me think of boys pulling the legs off flies for sport.
I'm a lone voice, of course. The FT finds it a "masterly demonic tableau", The Observer "a brilliant meditation on mortality". The Standard's own Derek Malcom thinks it may very well be the best film the Coens have ever made. Personally I can't help noticing all the great enthusiasts have been male.
The plot is lifted from Cormac McCarthy's original novel, an elegy for the old West set in 1980s Texas. Josh Brolin's hunter stumbles across a botched drug deal in the desert, nicks the loot and finds himself hunted by Bardem's psychopath. Arguably he deserves all he gets. But it's the other - little - people he drags into the frame that breaks my heart.
What is all this killing for? What great moral arc does it serve?
And, more importantly, where are the women? Yes, it's lovely to see Kelly Macdonald in a cameo role (I hope she gets the Hollywood career she deserves) but I'd argue that the best Coen films always have a ballsy female lead - where, to put it bluntly, Joel Coen's actress wife, Frances McDormand, is busy breathing down his neck.
Think of McDormand in Fargo, Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona or Marcia Gay Harden in Miller's Crossing. It may have inspired a postmodern cult, but the moments The Big Lebowski really takes flight for me are when Julianne Moore's "vaginal artist" Maude is on screen.
I'm probably being prudish about No Country for Old Men. It will clean up at the Oscars. Bardem is terrific, and so is Woody Harrelson (all 10 minutes of him). The cinematography by Roger Deakins is stunning.
But the lack of respect for the body, the sheer bloody aftermath depresses me. Yes, they may handle the killing with verve and ironic tension, but this is a Coen brothers film too far.
No Country For Old Men
Cert: 15
