The Coen Brothers have created a modern classic, and a very memorable one at that.

Rating: 10/10 (23 February 2008)

No Country For Old Men is about a man named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who one day while hunting in Rio Grande stumbles upon a bunch of dead bodies from a drug deal gone wrong. While looking around the murder site Llewelyn finds 2 million dollars tucked away in a duffel bag. He runs off with the bag but soon realizes that he has been found out, and is being tracked by a mysterious violent killer named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). He sends his wife away from the danger and leaves for a motel to hide out, but soon must find an intelligent way to defend himself because he is still being hunted. Meanwhile Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is tracking down Llewelyn and Chigurh, while trying to solve the murder case. From there on in violence and suspense occurs as Llewelyn tries to stop the violent and purely twisted Chigurh, and get away with the 2 million dollars.
This is certainly one of the best movies of 2007. No Country is well made, well acted, well written, everything about it is very good. The plot is very intriguing and constantly interesting. The dialogue is also excellent and sometimes actually scary. There is one scene I'd like to mention which involves No Country's villain Anton Chigurh and a department store clerk. The clerk asks Chigurh a little about himself, and chigurh replies with aggression and anger saying it's none of his business which only adds to the mystery of his character. During this suspenseful scene Chigurh is angered by the clerk's intentions and questions, so he decides to flip a coin and ask the clerk to call it heads or tails. It soon becomes obvious that this coin toss is going to determine the fate of this clerk, and the dialogue in that scene perfectly realistic and gave me shivers down my spine.
The acting in this film is also very good. Josh Brolin gives a great performance as a desperate man trying to get away with a lot of stolen money. Tommy Lee Jones is also very good and believable in his role as he is with many movies he stars in. But the real scene-stealer here is Javier Bardem who has been nominated for best supporting actor at the Oscars, and very much deserves it. Bardem's performance as Chigurh is highly intriguing and he is one of the key parts in No Country that makes the movie very suspenseful. I had never heard of this actor before this movie but now I'll keep an eye out for him since he impressed me so much.
There are quite a few scenes in No Country For Old Men that contain no dialogue at all. From there it is up to the actors and direction to generate suspense and key interest. That works to full effect in this movie because it is near perfectly handled. The scenes where Moss and Chigurh are on each other's trail are superb and to me very, very memorable. These scenes also carry out very originally and are very detailed in the way the characters react, how they hide, and how they prepare to take action. Anton Chigurh in my opinion is one of the best, if not the best, movie villain since Hannibal Lecter. Chigurh is extremely intelligent and also quite frightening and haunting. His character does not use a gun or knife like a normal killer in movies today. He uses a cattle gun with an air tank to shoot out the locks of the doors, and a certain kind of shotgun that I'm not sure of the name.
Besides these brilliantly executed scenes the story is also very interesting. It portrays one man's greediness and just how far he will go to keep the money he found. The storyline also never explains Chigurh's background which makes him mysterious, scary, and a memorable villain. Sheriff Bell's part is not as large as the plot going on between Moss and Chigurh. But he is every bit as intelligent as the other two main characters. No Country's story really portrays well a psychopathic maniac, and how he affects and harms the lives of people violently, psychologically, or both. Many audiences have complained that the end is a cop-out, which may be because it does not end like a normal film probably would. However I thought it was a good ending for not being sugar coated and instead taking a different route.
No Country For Old Men is a brilliant film and one of the best movies of 2007, and may even be one of the best movies of the whole decade. It is a suspensefully charged film that moves in a completely different direction than a normal movie. I give No Country For Old Men a 4 out of 4.