The Coen Brothers' Triumph!

Rating: 10/10 (16 October 2018)

No Country For Old Men is based on Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel of the same name: and having read the novel I can honestly say that the Coen Bros. did a fantastic job adapting the book for the screen. It's ridiculously faithful to the source material and it's visualized in such a gorgeously cinematic way that it's no wonder this movie won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2008 (for the films of 2007). It's a neo-Western, neo-noir thriller that is virtually an extravagant showcase for Javier Bardem's terrifying villain Anton Chigurh (which won Bardem the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). Bardem's so intimidating as Chigurh that I'd say he's almost as scary as Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter (even though this film isn't a horror-piece).
No Country for Old Men is a masterpiece of 2000s-cinema and rightly so: it's a multi-genre piece that has the same brutal desolation of a classic Western, the tense direction of action-thrillers from directors like Martin Scorsese or Michael Mann, but it has the grounded approach to Western filmmaking of John Ford and Sergio Leone. This film is entertaining yet relentlessly tense in its drama, satisfying yet bittersweet in its many payoffs, and never dull in its 2-hour run-time.
If you want a Western that's got the conventions of the oldie-goodies yet updates it for more modern times (1980 in this case), this film is an absolute must-see.
No Country for Old Men is a new country for cinema; a 5/5 star achievement.