Call it terrifying, stunningly bleak, humane, epic, intimate, darkly funny, deadly serious, or what have you: Whatever laudatory adjectives you throw its way are going to stick.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:221
Fresh:208
Rotten:13
Average Rating:8.5/10
Consensus: Another triumph for the Coen Brothers, No Country has the perfect mixture of suspense, humor, and desperately compelling performances. The seemingly simple story hides a more complex narrative, and high tension is maintained throughout.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for strong graphic violence and some language.
Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Genre: Drugs, Suspense, Thriller, Murder, Serial Killers, Money, Theatrical Release
Theatrical Release:18-01-2008
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.... 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. [More]
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly MacDonald
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly MacDonald, Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenwriter: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Producer: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Scott Rudin
Composer: Carter Burwell
Studio: Miramax Films
Reviews for No Country for Old Men
The film leaves you to figure whether such perception is real, Anton is random, or Carla Jean sees something about the "country" the men cannot.
The Coens return to form, creating their most idiosyncratic characters since Steve Buscemi's Carl Showalter faced down the wood chipper in Fargo.
Let's just say it's all amazing. No Country for Old Men is exactly the kind of challenge film buffs will love if you're sick of the by the numbers, multiplex drivel.
The Coens are wintry and dead calm ironists, and their movie is finally less an assault on our sensibilities than a subtle -- and possibly permanent -- insinuation into our consciousnesses.
If nothing else, No Country should win an award for Best Use of an Oxygen Tank.
If you're not looking for a "Fargo"-level masterpiece but just for a badass modern Western, it delivers plenty on that level.
Tommy Lee Jones combines forces with the Coen Brothers in the unforgiving winds of the West Texas prairie. Javier Barden's psycho-killer and the Coens' creepy direction and screenwriting pops out the grittiest film of the year.
The Coens return to their darker, earlier days and Brolin and Bardem deliver terrific performances.
After two artistic flops, it appeared that filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen had taken a fall. Not so. They're back with their twelfth and perhaps greatest film.
The Coen Brothers make the same old story exciting again by telling the entire story in action. Nobody explains their plans, they just see what they have to do and do it. It's all clear, and it's never slow.
A great American film. A dark and sometimes bleakly comic vision of our violent culture.
The Coen brothers' screenplay is faithful to McCarthy without being obsequious. In filming it, they play it straight, and the touches of signature humor that are there don't seem like flashes of style, but organic and right.
No Country for Old Men is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, but it shows all the Coen strengths. One is a genuine interest in the way people work.
No Country for Old Men is the first movie I've seen in a very long while that deserves to be called a masterpiece. It's such a stunning achievement in storytelling.
The film is as lean and mean as a barbed-wire necktie, darkly funny and much deeper than the average crime thriller.
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