The best of the Coens since 'Blood Simple' and 'Fargo'

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2007)

Joel and Ethan Coen created one of American cinema's landmark films in 1996the superbly atmospheric, very bloody, and painfully hilarious 'Fargo', which cemented their elevated status in Hollywood. Sinceaside from 'The Big Lebowski' and their characteristically moody noir, 'The Man Who Wasn't There'the two have danced around their obvious forte with films like 'O Brother', 'Intolerable Cruelty', and 'The Ladykillers'. As you'll hear or read all too much about No Country, it's truly a reflection of their greatest works, and it's perhaps their most engrossing and dangerous one yet.
In the Coens' guileless and forthright screen version of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 acclaimed novel, Josh Brolin puts in another great performance in his second of two films released within a month of each other ('American Gangster' was released on November 2) as Llewelyn Moss, a welder and inhabitant of a small Texas town who stumbles across an apparent drug-deal gone sournearly a half-dozen bodies, an equal number of bullet-sprayed pick-ups, a truck bed-full of unclaimed drugs, $2 million in cash, and a near-death Mexican who begs him for aquawhile out hunting. He claims the money for himself (as anyone would) and heads back to his humdrum trailer, where he's bombarded with inquiries by his concerned wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald).
Later that night, he returns to the bloody site with a jug of water, wherein addition to learning that the only left survivor is now deadhe is shot at and chased by a vicious canine into a streaming river close by. When he staggers to safety, drenched, exhausted and wounded, unbeknownst to him he is now the subject of a plethora of pursuers, most notably Sheriff Bell (played very well by the baggy-eyed Tommy Lee Jones) and a mysterious and terrifying killer named Anton Chigurh, whose murders are provoked by anything from pre-designated assignments to random encounters tothis is greata coin flip (in which case he asks unaware civilians to "call it" for their right to live).
Javier Bardem ('The Sea Inside') is given the part of Chigurh, an unyielding psychopath whose moral principles rival Hitler's. He is the epitome of evilemotionless, nonnegotiableand is absolutely horrifying to even think about. Chigurh is so ominous on his own, in fact, that the Coens don't even bother telling us his name until the last half of the film's final actand by then we've learned why: because any who knew it are already dead. Bardem's portrayal of the murderous villain is as dark and scrupulous as his character (it could garner an Oscar nod), and is one of the most memorable of any in Hollywood history. With the support of his accompanying cast (which also includes Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells, a smug conciliator for the drug cartel from which the payoff slips away), Bardem drives this film far past one of the best offerings of recent years and qualifies it as an all-time classic and one of the Coen brothers' best, alongside 'Blood Simple' and 'Fargo'.
I'm not saying 'No Country' is the greatest movie everit's not, at allbut it does to viewers what few films can: it makes them wary and fearful of the world's very darkest realities. Through the desolate presentation of the Old West (captured impeccably by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins), and an ingeniously sparse score by Carter Burwell, viewers are given the opportunity to live in the story itself. Though, upon sight of Anton Chigurh, they quickly appreciate their existence as it is: in a movie theater, frozen still and blown away.