Simply the best thriller of the year

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2007)

"No country" is a beautiful and tense thriller. This is not just a simple plot of man finds money, gets into a whole bag of trouble as a result.
There are a number of elements that lift it out of the ordinary: exceptional dialog, characterization, and filming.
For me, it was impossible not to be swept along by the surprises and the overall melancholy of the piece.
What lifts this so hugely out of the ordinary is a clever trick: the characters are all slow, thoughtful, philosophical, even existential - but the action is fast, violent, and the combination produces a thriller of a very high class indeed.
Tommy Lee Jones gives, I believe, a career best: laconic, hang-dog, the sheriff who is not fazed by anything. Javier Badern plays a psychopath with no limbic pathway whatsoever - he just hasn't a human emotion in his body - and yet his own logic is impeccable. Just like the poster suggests, and the Coen Brothers want, he lingers on and a superb cinematic figure.
Rather like "Paris, Texas" even the desert and its surroundings are a major character here; and the film is brilliant at marrying both the landscape and the moment into one.
But above all it is the story and the way that it's delivered - marvelous performances from all the leads and minors, tense action, and even humor, and above all a sense of uncertainty as to where we were going next.
Never boring, and a superb plot, never wrong-footing itself this is, without a shadow of a doubt, simply the best thriller of 2007.
Absolutely recommended.