No Country for Old Men

Year: 2007
Running time: 122 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: English
Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald

To live or to die, by the flip of a coin.

Following a run of fast-paced, occasionally absurd comedies (not that that's a bad thing), in 2007 the Coens reminded the world that they are also masters of cold and relentlessly brutal drama. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, it's a disturbing look at amoral criminality in Texas.

We open with police officer Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) reminiscing about days gone by, recognising that the crimes he has to deal with in his twilight years are so excessively violent as to be beyond his understanding.

Just such a monster is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a killer so lacking in morality that for him murder is little more than a chance to play an interesting game of chance, preferring to use a cattle gun to murder people. It may be his shocking haircut that causes him to act so dreadfully, but we'll never know.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) discovers the aftermath of what appears to have been a drug deal which ended badly. Amongst the bodies, he also finds $2 million in cash. Knowing that he shouldn't, he takes it and runs. Chigurh is employed to retrieve the money and begins to track Moss, and the scene is set for a tense and sustained game of cat and mouse.

Ed Tom Bell knows he can't hold back the tide of darkness.

Bell is also trying to get to Moss, if only to try to offer some kind of protection from Chigurh, if he can, resigned to the fact that the assassin is simply another part of the wave of terrifying, remorseless, uncaring violent criminality against which he is largely powerless. It's a chilling and depressing thing to consider, but considering the world we live in in 2019, where brutality, amorality and a callous disregard for facts and the welfare of everything and everyone is putting and keeping people in power all over the world from America and my own fair homeland, through Russia, to Brazil, it's proven sadly prescient.

The Coens double down on the bleakness as the story comes to its conclusion, following an extended masterclass in extracting tension from the slow chase across the American south. It's a very, very good film, possibly the Coen's best. If not their best, it's certainly up there. But I don't like it as much as some of their others. I prefer Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski. No Country for Old Men is probably better made than all of them, but I prefer my Coens a little less bleak. It's highly recommended, a must-watch even, but just not as much fun to watch.

Score: 8/10

I find myself outnumbered in my opinion. It seems other reviews put No Country for Old Men ahead of pretty much every other Coen effort. See these reviews from Peter at The Guardian and Christopher at The Atlantic.