No Country for Old Men

Synopsis
With NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, the Coen Brothers have found a perfect match in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy. Their adaptation of McCarthy's praised novel is a staggering masterpiece. In this almost impossibly faithful adaptation, the film takes place in a small Texas border town in 1980. Sheriff Bell (a never-been-better Tommy Lee Jones) has ruled the land for years without the use of a gun, but a new brand of reckless lawlessness has taken over his town. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is an innocent Everyman with a devoted wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), but when he stumbles across a drug deal gone deadly and finds two million dollars, he's determined to keep it for himself. There's only one problem. He's being pursued by one of the most amoral, evil psychopaths that the big screen has ever seen. Wearing an absurd haircut and brandishing a pressurized weapon that's used to murder cattle, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) creeps forward on his mission to track Moss down and return the money to its rightful owners to save his own skin. As the tension mounts, the body count begins to rise, confirming Sheriff Bell's inability to battle this new wave of modern brutality.

The most striking thing about the Coen Brothers' thriller is their masterly use of silence to create an almost unbearable level of tension. Cinematographer Roger Deakins is once again at the top of his game, beautifully capturing this stark and lonely world. The well-rounded cast is clearly excited to be a part of such a stellar production--particularly Bardem, whose Chigurh is a freakishly mysterious monster, and is certain to haunt viewers long after the final credit has rolled. In a career filled with striking achievements, this might very well be the Coen Brothers' finest. It is filmmaking at its best.

Production Notes

Reviews
"The film represents vintage Coen brothers with all the strengths that have established them as serious auteurs from BLOOD SIMPLE onward." (Box Office)

4 stars out of 4 -- "[T]his landmark of a movie is fresh territory for the Coens....Good and evil are tackled with a rigorous fix on the complexity involved....The Coens squeeze us without mercy in a vise of tension and suspense..." (Rolling Stone)

"[A] measured yet excitingly tense, violent yet maturely sorrowful thriller...[A] stirring success..." -- Grade: A- (Entertainment Weekly)

"For formalists -- those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design -- it's pure heaven....[Joel and Ethan Coen] combine virtuosic dexterity with mischievous high spirits..." (New York Times)

3.5 stars out of 4 -- "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is suspenseful, bleak and haunting....[With] masterful performances." (USA Today)

5 stars out of 5 -- "Virtuoso. A film of pin-sharp principles, cross-hair precision and suffocating tension, this Coens stunner hits like a cattle gun between the eyes." (Total Film)

Ranked #1 in Rolling Stone's "10 Best Movies Of 2007" -- "[A] transfixing meditation on good and evil....Javier Bardem gives a career performance..." (Rolling Stone)

4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] tense, stripped-down thriller....The pairing of McCarthy and the Coens works surprisingly well." (Uncut)

"An intense, nihilistic thriller, as well as a model of implacable storytelling, this is a film you can't stop watching..." (Los Angeles Times)

5 stars out of 5 -- "The Coens have rediscovered their mojo, with, dare we say it, a new maturity." (Empire)

"NO COUNTRY is a pitch-perfect thriller that delivers the pleasurable fear and suspense expected of the genre even as it sends its conventions to the shredder." (Sight and Sound)

5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he Coen Brothers' finest film in a long time....Javier Bardem's fate-driven hitman will doubtless prove an enduring cinematic creation." (Ultimate DVD)