Excellent Film

Rating: 10/10 (5 October 2008)

The Coen Brothers are some of the best filmmakers in the business, very determined to keep their independent status. They have made some great films like Miller's Crossing, Fargo and the Big Lebowski, but they had been through a period where they made sub-par films, especially for their standards. Luckily No Country for Old Men is a welcome return to form and very deserving for winning the Oscars it got.
The film is based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, but I have no read it, so I will just judge it as a film. It is about a drug deal that goes wrong in the middle of the desert of Texas in 1983, leaving a number of Mexican gangsters dead. A local man Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) was hunting in the area when he discoveries the carnage that happened. He discovered that one man was still alive and that they was two million dollars in cash in a case. However, he suffers guilt and returns to the site with water. In the middle of the night he finds out that they were a more people involved, and a sadistic hit-man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who will kill to get results and his favourite tool is the bolt gun. Moss has to go on the run, sending his wife to her mother's and has to use all his cunning to avoid and fight Chigurh. In the middle of these events is the local retiring sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who slowly gets involved in a world of violence and organised crime. As well there are Mexican gangsters and a bounty hunter played by Woody Harrelson also wanting the money and will do anything to get it.
It is a well plotted film, like the best Coen brothers' which have multiple plot twists and wide range of characters. It is well written, get examples for budding writers. The direction has typical Coen's flair in a good thriller setting: admittedly the film is a little more mainstream compared to other films they have made, but they were still able to make it their own. The characters are colourful and all show to have good knowledge and skill. Tommy Lee Jones character reminded me of Frances McDormand in Fargo. Brolin was able to make his character likely and Bardam was truly a sinister character, who deserved to win an Oscar for best supporting actor. I personally hope he has a good and long career in English and Spanish speaking films. Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald was also in the film and I personally thought she did an excellent Texan accent. This film does not have as much humour to other films by the brothers, but it was still an intelligent film which was philosophical at times. It is a worthy film.