Wow, what a take. Of course you are fully entitled to it! This is perhaps favorite movie, written by my favorite author and adapted/directed by my favorite fil

Wow, what a take. Of course you are fully entitled to it! This is perhaps favorite movie, written by my favorite author and adapted/directed by my favorite filmmakers. I was absolutely on the edge of my seat basically from start to finish on the first watch, and am still fully captivated every time I revisit it. I find it a fascinating character study of three different people -- the cowboy, the sheriff, and the assassin. Each of them feels so incredibly authentic despite inhabiting roles from tired old tropes. I also believe the movie was superbly acted, which I guess is no surprise given that it was a critical success with some big names. The point of the plot isn't to subvert expectations so much as to tell a story that is true to life: the societal decay which began in the 70's and 80's that can be embodied by, if not directly attributed, to the war on drugs. More than anything else, the plot is a massive indictment of the war on drugs, as well as an (unpleasant) meditation on the role of violence in the American West that has existed for generations. Of course, that latter point applies to basically all of McCarthy's work. While some of the characters are certainly nihilistic (or just bewildered and filled with existential dread, in the case of the sheriff), the story itself is not. In fact, the novel was criticized by some for being too moralizing compared to McCarthy's other work. The hero (and just about everyone else in the story) loses in the end to the implacable evil: an honor-bound psychopath who is motivated by more than just greed (but plenty of that too), who is perfectly suited to navigating his desires and achieving his grisly ends with absolutely no regard for the society that enables his success. By the end of the film, he almost feels like a force of nature moreso than a man (and I think this is intentional, for instance in the way he is polite and almost apologetic as he murders the hero's widow at the end simply because he gave the hero an ultimatum that was refused). The point wasn't to subvert our expectations, although that may have happened along the way. The point was to show a very brutal reality that we still face today by retelling a story old as time through unique characters and a (semi) modern setting. Haha ok I'll stop adding to this now. As you can tell, I have a lot of love for this story. You don't have to love it, but maybe don't be so quick to shit on people who do :)